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 LIBRARY 
 
 Bequest of 
 
 William Be sfcegTcUJ-e . UtrnxXtpg, 
 
N HEROES, 
 
 AND THE HEROIC 
 
 V 
 
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 V 
 
ON HEROES, 
 
 HERO-WORSHIP, AND THE HEROIC 
 
 IN HISTORY. 
 
 %\% ftuttoxts. 
 
 REPORTED, WITH EMENDATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 
 
 By THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 Author of " The French Revolution," " Sartor Resartus," &c. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 CINCINNATI: 
 PUBLISHED BY U. P. JAMES, 
 
 NO. 26 PEARL STREET. 
 
 M DCCC XLII. 
 
f ^76& 
 
 I 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Hero as Divinity. — Odin. Paganism: Scandinavian 
 Mythology, 5 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 The Hero as Prophet. — Mahomet : Islam, - - - - 54 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 The Hero as Poet. — Dante; Shakspeare, - - - - 98 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 The Hero as Priest. — Luther ; Reformation ; Knox ; Puri- 
 tanism, 143 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 The Hero as Man of Letters. — Johnson, Rousseau, Burns, - 190 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 The Hero as King. — Cromwell. — Napoleon : Modern Revo- 
 lutionism, - - - - 241 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 [Tuesday, 5th May, 1840.] 
 
 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. — PAGANISM! SCAN- 
 DINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 We have undertaken to discourse here for a little 
 on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our 
 world's business, how they have shaped themselves 
 in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, 
 what work they did; — on Heroes, namely, and on 
 their reception and performance; what I call Hero- 
 worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evi- 
 dently this is a large topic; deserving quite other 
 treatment than we can expect to give it at present. 
 A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide as 
 Universal History itself. For, as I take it, Univer- 
 sal History, the history of what man has accom- 
 plished in this world, is at bottom the History of the 
 Great Men who have worked here. They were the 
 leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, pat- 
 terns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever 
 the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; 
 all things that we see standing accomplished in the 
 world are properly the outer material result, the prac- 
 tical realization and imbodiment, of Thoughts that 
 dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul 
 of the whole world's history, it may justly be con- 
 sidered, were the history of these. Too clearly it is 
 a topic we shall do no justice to in this place! 
 I 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any 
 way, are profitable company. We cannot look, how- 
 ever imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining 
 something by him. He is the living light-fountain, 
 which it js good and pleasant to be near. The light 
 which enlightens, which has enlightened the dark- 
 ness of the world: and this not a kindled lamp only, 
 but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift 
 of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of na- 
 tive original insight, of manhood and heroic noble- 
 ness- — ii} whose radiance all souls feel that it is well 
 with them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not 
 grudge to wander in such neighbourhood for awhile. 
 These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely 
 distant countries and epochs, and in mere external 
 figure differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully 
 at them, to illustrate several things for us. Could we 
 see them well, we should get some glimpses into the 
 very marrow of the world's history. How happy, 
 could I but, in any measure, in such times as these, 
 make manifest to you the meanings of Heroism; the 
 divine relation (for 1 may well call it such) which in all 
 times unites a Great Man to other men ; and thus, as it 
 were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as break 
 ground on it! At all events, I must make the attempt. 
 
 It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion 
 is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a 
 nation of men's. By religion I do not mean here the 
 church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith 
 which he will sign, and, in words or otherwise, assert; 
 not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We 
 see men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to 
 almost all degrees of worth or worthlessness under 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. / 
 
 each or any of them. This is not what I call reli- 
 gion, this profession and assertion; which is often 
 only a profession and assertion from the outworks of 
 the man, from the mere argumentative region of him, 
 if even so deep as that. But the thing a man does 
 practically believe, (and this is often enough iviihoitt 
 asserting it even to himself, much less to others;) 
 the thing a man, does practically lay to heart, and 
 know for certain, concerning his vital relations to 
 this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny 
 there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, 
 and creatively determines all the rest. That is his 
 religion; or, it may be, his mere skepticism and no- 
 religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself 
 to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No- 
 World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you 
 tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what 
 the kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a 
 nation we inquire, therefore, first of all, What reli- 
 gion they had ? Was it Heathenism, — plurality of 
 gods, mere sensuous representation of this Mystery 
 of Life, and for chief recognised element therein 
 Physical Force? Was it Christianism; faith in an 
 Invisible, not as real only, but as the only reality; 
 Time, through every meanest moment of it, rest- 
 ing on Eternity; Pagan empire of Force displayed 
 by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness? Was it 
 Skepticism, uncertainty and inquiry whether there 
 was an Unseen World, any Mystery of Life except 
 a mad one; — doubt as to all this, or perhaps unbelief 
 and flat denial ? Answering of this question is giving 
 us the soul of the history of the man or nation. — 
 The thoughts they had were the parents of the actions 
 they did ; their feelings were parents of their thoughts; 
 
8 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 it was the unseen spiritual in them that determined 
 the outward and actual; — their religion, as I say, was 
 the great fact about them. In these Discourses, 
 limited as we are, it will be good to direct our survey 
 chiefly to that religious phasis of the matter. That 
 once known well, all is known. We have chosen as 
 the first Hero in our series, Odin the central figure 
 of Scandinavian Paganism; an emblem to us of a 
 most extensive province of things. Let us look, for 
 a little, at the Hero as Divinity, the oldest primary 
 form of Heroism. 
 
 Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this 
 Paganism; almost inconceivable to us in these days. 
 A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, 
 confusions, falsehoods, and absurdities covering the 
 whole field of life there. A thing that fills us with 
 astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with in- 
 credulity, — for truly it is not easy to understand that 
 sane men could ever calmly, with their eyes open, 
 believe and live by such a set of doctrines. That 
 men should have worshipped their poor fellow-man 
 as a God, and not him only, but stocks and stones, 
 and all manner of animate and inanimate objects; and 
 fashioned for themselves such a distracted chaos of 
 hallucinations by way of Theory of the Universe: all 
 this looks like an incredible fable. Nevertheless it 
 is a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous inex- 
 tricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, made 
 as we are, did actually hold by, and live at home in. 
 This is strange. Yes, we may pause in sorrow and 
 silence over the depths of darkness that are in man; 
 if we rejoice in the heights of purer vision he has 
 attained to. Such things were and are in man; in all 
 men; in us too. 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 9 
 
 Some speculators have a short way of accounting 
 for the Pagan religion: mere quackery, priestcraft, 
 and dupery, say they; no sane man ever did believe 
 it, — merely contrived to persuade other men, not 
 worthy of the name of sane, to believe it! It will 
 be often our duty to protest against this sort of hypo- 
 thesis about men's doings and history; and I here, 
 on the very threshold, protest against it in reference 
 to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man 
 has ever for a length of lime striven to walk in this 
 world. - They have all had a truth in them, or men 
 would not have taken them up. Quackery and 
 dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more 
 advanced decaying stages of religions, they have 
 fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the 
 originating influence in such things; it was not the 
 health and life of such things, but their disease, the 
 sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us 
 never forget this. It seems to me a most mournful 
 hypothesis, that of quackery giving birth to any faith 
 even in savage men. Quackery gives birth to no- 
 thing; gives death to all. We shall not see into the 
 true heart of any thing, if we look merely at the 
 quackeries of it; if we do not reject the quackeries 
 altogether; as mere diseases, corruptions, with which 
 our and all men's sole duty is to have done with 
 them, to sweep them out of our thoughts as out of 
 our practice, Man every where is the born enemy 
 of lies. I find Grand Lamaism itself to have a kind 
 of truth in it. Read the candid, clear-sighted, rather 
 skeptical Mr. Hamilton's Travels into that country, 
 and see. They have their belief, these poor Thibet 
 people, that Providence sends down always an incar- 
 nation of Himself into every generation. At bottom 
 
 1* 
 
10 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 some belief In a kind of Pope ! At bottom still better 
 belief that there is a Greatest Man; that he is dis- 
 coverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat 
 him with an obedience which knows no bounds! — 
 This is the truth of Grand Lamaism; the "discovera- 
 bility" is the only error here. The Thibet Priests 
 have methods of their own of discovering what Man 
 is Greatest, fit to be supreme over them. Bad me- 
 thods: but are they so much worse than our methods, 
 — of understanding him to be always the eldest-born 
 of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a difficult thing 
 
 to find good methods for! We shall begin to have 
 
 a chance of understanding Paganism, when we first 
 admit that to its followers it was at one time, earnestly 
 true. Let us consider it very certain that men did 
 believe in Paganism; men with open eyes, sound 
 senses, men made altogether like ourselves; that we, 
 had we been there, should have believed in it. Ask 
 now, What Paganism could have been? 
 
 Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attri- 
 butes such things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic 
 minds, say these theorists; a shadowing forth, in alle- 
 gorical fable, in personification and visual form, of 
 what such poetic minds had known and felt of this 
 Universe. Which agrees, add they, with a primary 
 law of human nature, still every where observable at 
 work, though in less important things,«That what a 
 man feels intensely, he struggles to speak out of him, 
 to see represented before him in visual shape, and as 
 
 if with a kind of life and historical reality in it. 
 
 Now doubtless there is such a law, and it is one c f 
 the deepest in human nature; neither need we doubt 
 that it did operate fundamentally in this business. — 
 The hypothesis which ascribes Paganism wholly or 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 11 
 
 mostly to this agency, I call a little more respectable; 
 but I cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. Think, 
 would we believe, and take with us as our life-gui- 
 dance, an allegory, a poetic sport? Not sport, but 
 earnest, is what we should require. It is a most 
 earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not 
 sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him ; 
 it was a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be 
 alive! I find, therefore, that though these Allegory- 
 theorists are on the way towards truth in this matter, 
 they have not reached it either. Pagan religion is 
 indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what men felt and 
 knew about the Universe; and all Religions are 
 Symbols of that, altering always as that alters: but 
 it seems to me a radical perversion, and even inver- 
 sion, of the business, to put that forward as the origin 
 and moving cause, when it was rather the result and 
 termination. To get beautiful allegories, a perfect 
 poetic symbol, was not the want of men; but to know 
 what they were to believe about this Universe, 
 what course they were to steer in it; what, in this 
 mysterious Life of theirs, they had to hope and to 
 fear, to do and to forbear doing. The Pilgrim 's Pro- 
 gress is an Allegory, and a beautiful, just, and serious 
 one: but consider whether Bunyan's Allegory could 
 have preceded the Faith it symbolizes! The faith 
 had to be already there, standing believed by every 
 body; of which the Allegory could then become a 
 shadow; and, with all its seriousness, we may say a 
 sportful shadow, a mere play of the Fancy, in com- 
 parison with that awful fact and scientific certainty, 
 which it poetically strives to emblem. The Allegory 
 is the product of the certainty, not the producer of it; 
 not in Bunyan's nor in any other case. For Pagan- 
 
12 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 ism, therefore, we have still to inquire, Whence 
 came that scientific certainty, the parent of such a 
 bewildered heap of allegories, errors, and confu- 
 sions? How was it, what was it? 
 
 Surely, it were a foolish attempt to pretend "ex- 
 plaining," in this place, or in any place, such a 
 phenomenon as that far-distant, distracted, cloudy 
 imbroglio of Paganism, — more like a cloud-field, than 
 a distant continent of firm land and facts! It is no 
 longer a reality, yet it was one. We ought to under- 
 stand that this seeming cloud-field was once a reality; 
 that not poetic allegory, least of all that dupery and 
 deception was the origin of it. Men, I say, never 
 did believe idle songs, never risked their soul's life 
 on allegories: men, in all times, especially in early 
 earnest times, have had an instinct for detecting 
 quacks, for detesting quacks. Let us try if, leaving 
 out both the quack-theory and the allegory one, and 
 listening with affectionate attention to that far-off, 
 confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascer- 
 tain so much as this at least, That there was a kind 
 of fact at the heart of them; that they too were not 
 mendacious and distracted, but in their own poor 
 way true and sane ! 
 
 You remember that fancy of Aristotle's, of a man 
 who had grown to maturity in some dark distance, 
 and was brought on a sudden into the upper air to 
 see the sun rise. What would his wonder be, says 
 the Philosopher, his rapt astonishment at the sight 
 we daily witness with indifference! With the free 
 open sense of a child, yet with the ripe faculty of a 
 man, his whole heart would be kindled by that sight, 
 he would discern it well to be Godlike, his soul would 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 13 
 
 fall down in worship before it. Now, just such a 
 childlike greatness was in the primitive nations. 
 The first Pagan Thinker among rude men, the first 
 man that began to think, was precisely the child-man 
 of Aristotle. Simple, open as a child, yet with the 
 depth and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no 
 name to him; he had not yet united under a name 
 the infinite variety of sights, sounds, shapes, and 
 motions, which we now collectively name Universe, 
 Nature, or the like, — and so with a name dismiss it 
 from us. To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet 
 new, unveiled under names or formulas; it stood 
 naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, 
 unspeakable.* Nature was to this man, what to the 
 Thinker and Prophet it for ever is, jp re /er natural. 
 This green, flowery, rock-built earth, the trees, the 
 mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas; — that great 
 deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds 
 sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself 
 together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain; 
 what is it? Ay, what? At bottom we do not yet 
 know; we can never know at all. It is not by our 
 superior insight that we escape the difficulty; it is 
 by our superior levity, our inattention, our want of 
 insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to won- 
 der at it. Hardened around us, incasing wholly every 
 notion we form, is a wrappage of traditions, hearsays, 
 mere words. We call that fire of the black thunder- 
 cloud "electricity," and lecture learnedly about it, 
 and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what 
 is it? What made it? Whence comes it ? Whither 
 goes it ? Science has done much for us; but it is a 
 poor science that would hide from us the great, deep 
 sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never 
 
14 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere 
 superficial film. This world, after all our science 
 and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscru- 
 table, magical, and more, to whosoever will think 
 of it. 
 
 S That great mystery of Time, were there no other; 
 the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called 
 Time, rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all- 
 embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Uni- 
 verse swim like exhalations, like apparitions which 
 are, and then are not: this is for ever very literally a 
 miracle; a thing to strike us dumb, — for we have no 
 word to speak about it.; This Universe, ah me! — 
 what could the wild man know of it; what can we 
 yet know? That it is a Force, and thousandfold 
 Complexity of Forces; a Force which is not we. That 
 is all; it is not we, it is altogether different from us. 
 «' Force, Force, every where Force; we ourselves a 
 mysterious Force in the centre of that.t "There is 
 not a leaf rotting on the high-way but has Force in it; 
 how else could it rot? Nay surely, to the Atheistic 
 Thinker, if such a one were possible, it must be a 
 miracle too, this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force, 
 which envelops us here; never-resting whirlwind, 
 high as Immensity, old as Eternity. >. What is it? 
 God's Creation, the religious people answer; it is the 
 Almighty God's! Atheistic science babbles poorly 
 of it, with scientific nomenclatures, experiments, and 
 what not, as if it were a poor dead thing, to be bottled 
 up in Leyden jars, and sold over counters: but the 
 natural sense of man, in all times, if he will honestly 
 apply his sense, proclaims it to be a living thing, — 
 ,ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which 
 the best attitude for us, after never so much science, 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 15 
 
 is awe, devout prostration, and humility of soul; 
 worship if not in words, then in silence. 
 
 But now I remark farther: What in such a time as 
 ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, 
 the stripping off of those poor undevout wrappages, 
 nomenclatures, and scientific hearsays, — this, the an- 
 cient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these 
 things, did for itself. The world, which is now divine 
 only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever 
 would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it 
 face to face. "AH was Godlike or God:" — Jean Paul 
 still finds it so; the giant Jean Paul, who has power 
 to escape out of hearsays: but then there were no 
 hearsays. Canopus shining down over the dej^j 
 with its blue diamond brightness, (that wild blue 
 spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever wit- 
 ness here,) would pierce into the heart of the wild 
 Ishmaelitish man, whom it was guiding through the 
 solitary waste there. :To his wild heart, with all feel- 
 ings in it, with no speech for any feeling,* it might 
 seem a little eye, that Canopus, glancing out on him 
 from the great deep Eternity; revealing the inner 
 Splendour to him. Cannot we understand how these 
 men worshipped Canopus; became what we call 
 Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the 
 secret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is tran- 
 scendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no 
 limit or measure; that is worship. To these primeval 
 men, all things and every thing they saw exist beside 
 them were an emblem of the Godlike, of some God. 
 And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. 
 To us also, through every star, through every blade 
 of grass, is not a God made visible, if we will open 
 our minds and eyes? We do not worship in that 
 
16 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 way now: but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof 
 of what we call a "poetic nature/ 7 that we recognise 
 how every object has a divine beauty in it; how 
 every object still verily is "a window through which 
 we may look into infinitude itself?" He that can 
 discern the loveliness of things, we call him Poet, 
 Painter, Man of Genius, gifted, loveable. These poor 
 Sabeans did even what he does, — in their own fashion. 
 That they did it, in what fashion soever, was a merit; 
 better than what the entirely stupid man did, what 
 the horse and camel did, — namely, nothing! 
 
 But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon 
 are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that 
 more so than any of them is man such an emblem. 
 You have heard of St. Chrysostom's celebrated saying, 
 in reference to the Shekinah, or ark of Testimony, 
 visible Revelation of God, among the Hebrews: — 
 "The true Shekinah is Man!" Yes, it is even so: 
 this is no vain phrase; it is veritably so. The essence 
 of our being, the mystery in us that calls itself " I," 
 — ah, what words have we for such things? — is a 
 breath of heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself 
 in man. This body, these faculties, this life of ours, 
 is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed? " There 
 is but one temple in the universe," says the devout 
 Novalis, "and that is the body of Man. Nothing 
 is holier than that high form. Bending before 
 men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the 
 Flesh. We touch Heaven when we lay our hand on 
 a human body !" This sounds much like a mere 
 flourish of rhetoric; but it is not so. If well medi- 
 tated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact; the ex- 
 pression, in such words as can be had, of the actual 
 truth of the thing. We arc the miracle of miracles, — 
 
LECT. I- THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 17 
 
 the great inscrutable mystery of God. We cannot 
 understand it, we know not how to speak of it; but 
 we may feel and know, if we like, that it is verily so. 
 Well; these truths were once more readily felt 
 than now. The young generations of the world, who 
 had in them the freshness of young children, and yet 
 the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they 
 had finished off all things in Heaven and Earth by 
 merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze 
 direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they 
 felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; — 
 they, without being mad, could worship Nature, and 
 man more than any thing else in Nature. Worship, 
 that is, as I said above, admire without limit: this, 
 in the full use of their faculties, with all sincerity of 
 heart, they could do. I consider Hero-worship to be 
 the grand modifying element in that ancient system 
 of thought. What I called the perplexed jungle of 
 Paganism sprang, we may say, out of many roots; 
 every admiration, adoration of a star or natural object, 
 was a root or fibre of a root; but Hero-worship is the 
 deepest root of all; the tap-root, from which in a great 
 degree all the rest were nourished and grown. 
 
 And now if worship even of a star had some mean- 
 ing in it, how much more might that of a Hero! 
 Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a 
 Great Man. I say great men are still admirable; I 
 say there is, at bottom, nothing else admirable! !No 
 nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher 
 than himself dwells in the breast of man.' It is to 
 this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in 
 man's life: Religion I find stand upon it; not Pagan- 
 ism only, but far higher and truer religions, — all 
 religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt, 
 2 
 
18 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 prostrate admiration, submission, burning, bound- 
 less, for a noblest godlike Form of Man, — is not that 
 the germ of Christianity itself? The greatest of all 
 Heroes is One — whom we do not name here! Let 
 sacred silence meditate that sacred matter; you will 
 find it the ultimate perfection of a principle extant 
 throughout man's whole history on earth. 
 
 Or coming into lower, less tmspeakable provinces, 
 is not all Loyalty akin to religious Faith also? Faith 
 is loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual 
 Hero. And what therefore is loyalty proper, the 
 life-breath of all society, but an effluence of Hero- 
 worship, submissive admiration for the truly great? 
 Society is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of 
 rank, on which human association rests, are what we 
 may call a Hero-arehy (Government of Heroes,) — or 
 a Hierarchy, for it is " sacred " enough withal! The 
 Duke means Dux, Leader; King is Konning, Kan- 
 rang, Man that knows or cans. Society every where 
 is some representation, not msupportably inaccurate, 
 of a graduated Worship of Heroes; reverence and 
 obedience done to men really great and w T ise. Not 
 ^supportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as 
 bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing 
 gold; — and several of them, alas, always are forged 
 notes. We can do with some forged false notes; 
 with a good many even : but not with all, or the most 
 of them forged! '. No: there have to come revolutions 
 then; cries of Democracy, Liberty and Equality, and 
 I know not what: the notes being all false, and no 
 gold to be had for them, people take to crying in their 
 despair that there is no gold, that there never was 
 any! — " Gold," Hero-worship, is nevertheless, as it 
 was always and every where, and cannot cease till 
 man himself ceases. • 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 19 
 
 I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, 
 the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone 
 out, and finally ceased. This, for reasons which it 
 will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an 
 age that as it were denies the existence of great men; 
 denies the desirableness of great men. Show our 
 critics a great man, a Luther for example, they begin 
 to what they call "account" for him; not to worship 
 him, but to take the dimensions of him, — and bring 
 him out to be a little kind of man ! He was the " crea- 
 ture of the Time," they say; the Time called him 
 forth, the Time did every thing, he nothing — but 
 what we the little critic could have done too! This 
 seems to me but melancholy work. The Time call 
 forth? Alas, we have known Times call loudly 
 enough for their great men; but not find him when 
 they called! He was not there; Providence had not 
 sent him; the Time, calling its loudest, had to go 
 down to confusion and wreck because he would not 
 come when called. For if we will think of it, no 
 Time need have gone to ruin, could it have found a 
 man great enough, a man wise and good enough: 
 wisdom to discern truly what the Time wanted, va- 
 lour to lead it on the right road thither; These are 
 the salvation of any Time. But 1 liken common 
 languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplex- 
 ity, with their languid doubting characters and em- 
 barrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling down 
 into ever worse distress towards final ruin; all this 
 I liken to dry dead fuel^ waiting for the lightning out 
 of Heaven that shall kindle it. ', The great man, with 
 his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the 
 lightning. *» His word is the wise healing word which 
 all can believe in. All blazes round him now, when 
 
20 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 he has once struck on it, into fire like his own. The 
 dry mouldering sticks are thought to have called him 
 forth. They did want him greatly; but as to calling 
 him forth — ! — Those are critics of small vision, I 
 think, who cry: "See, is it not the sticks that made 
 the fire?" No sadder proof can be given by a man 
 of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. 
 There is no sadder symptom of a generation than 
 such general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with 
 faith only in the heap of barren dead fuel. It is the 
 last consummation of unbelief. In all epochs of the 
 world's history, we shall find the Great Man to have 
 been the indispensable saviour of his epoch; — the 
 lightning, without which the fuel never would have 
 burnt. The History of the World, I said already, 
 was the Biography of Great Men. 
 
 Such small critics do what they can to promote 
 unbelief and universal spiritual paralysis; but hap- 
 pily they cannot always completely succeed. In all 
 times it is possible for a man to rise great enough to 
 feel that they and their doctrines are chimeras and 
 cobwebs. And what is notable, in no time whatever 
 can they entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts 
 a certain altogether peculiar reverence for Great 
 Men; genuine admiration, loyalty, adoration, how- 
 ever dim and perverted it may be. Hero-worship 
 endures for ever while man endures. Bos well vene- 
 rates his Johnson, right truly even in the Eighteenth 
 century. ', The unbelieving French believe in their 
 Voltaire; and burst out round him into very curious 
 Hero-worship, in that last act of his life, when they 
 "stifle him under roses.'V It has always seemed to 
 me extremely curious this of Voltaire. Truly, if 
 Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship, 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 21 
 
 then we may find here in Voltairism one of the low- 
 est! He whose life was that of a kind of Antichrist, 
 does again on this side exhibit a curious contrast. No 
 people ever were so little prone to admire at all as 
 those French of Voltaire. Persiflage was the charac- 
 ter of their whole mind; adoration had nowhere a 
 place in it. Yet see ! The old man of Ferney comes 
 up to Paris; an old, tottering, infirm man of eighty- 
 four years. They feel that he too is a kind of Hero; 
 that he has spent his life in opposing error and injus- 
 tice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in 
 high places; — in short that he too, though in a strange 
 way, has fought like a valiant man. They feel withal 
 that, if persiflage be the great thing, there never was 
 such a persifleur. He is the realized ideal of every 
 one of them; the thing they are all wanting to be; 
 of all Frenchmen the most French. ' He is properly 
 their god, — such god as they are fit for. Accord- 
 ingly all persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the 
 Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do they not worship 
 him? People of quality disguise themselves as 
 tavern-waiters. The Maitre de Poste, with a broad 
 oath orders his Postillion: " Va bon train; thou art 
 driving M. de Voltaire." At Paris his carriage is " the 
 nucleus of a comet, whose train fills whole streets." 
 The ladies pluck a hair or two from his fur, to keep 
 it as a sacred relic. There was nothing highest, 
 beautifullest, noblest in all France, that did not feel 
 this man to be higher, beautifuller, nobler. 
 
 Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson 
 from the divine Founder of Christianity to the wither- 
 ed Pontiff of Encyclopedism,;in all times and places, 
 the Hero has been worshipped. .' It will ever be so.' 
 We all love great men; love, venerate, and bow down 
 2* 
 
22 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 submissive before great men: nay, can we Jionestly 
 bow down to any thing else? Ah, does not every 
 true man feel that he is himself made higher by do- 
 ing reverence to what is really above him? No 
 nobler or more blessed feeling dwells in man's heart/ 
 -. And to me it is very cheering to consider that no 
 skeptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity, and 
 aridity of any Time and its influences can destroy 
 this noble in-born loyalty and worship that Ls in man: 
 In times of unbelief, which soon have to become times 
 of revolution, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay 
 and ruin is visible to every body. For myself in 
 these days, I seem to see in this indestructibility of 
 Hero-worship the everlasting adamant lower than 
 which the confused wreck of revolutionary things 
 cannot fall. The confused wreck of things, crumb- 
 ling and even crashing and tumbling all round us in 
 these revolutionary ages, will get down so far; no 
 farther. * It is an eternal corner-stone, from which 
 they can begin to build themselves up again.,* That 
 man, in some sense or other, worships Heroes; that 
 w r e all of us reverence and must ever reverence Great 
 Men: this is, to me, the living rock amid all rushings 
 down whatsoever; — the one fixed point in modern 
 revolutionary history, otherwise as if bottomless and 
 shoreless. 
 
 So much of truth, only under an ancient obsolete 
 vesture, but the spirit of it still true, do 1 find in the 
 Paganism of old nations. Nature is still divine, the 
 revelation of the workings of God; the Hero is still 
 worshipable: this, under poor cramped incipient 
 forms, is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as 
 they could, to set forth. I think Scandinavian Pa- 
 ganism, to us here is more interesting than any other. 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 23 
 
 It is, for one thing, the latest; it continued in these 
 regions of Europe till the eleventh century; eight 
 hundred years ago the Norwegians were still wor- 
 shippers of Odin. It is interesting also as the creed 
 of our fathers; the men whose blood still runs in 
 our veins, whom doubtless we still resemble in so 
 many ways. Strange: they did believe that, while 
 we believe so differently. Let us look a little at this 
 poor Norse creed, for many reasons. We have tole- 
 rable means to do it; for there is another point of in- 
 terest in these Scandinavian mythologies: that they 
 have been preserved so well. 
 
 In that strange island Iceland, — burst up, the geolo- 
 gists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land 
 of barrenness and lava; swallowed many months of 
 every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleam- 
 ing beauty in summer-time; towering up there, stern 
 and grim, in the North Ocean; with its snow-jokuls, 
 roaring geysers, sulphur pools, and horrid volcanic 
 chasms, like the waste chaotic battle-field of Frost 
 and Fire^'where of all places we least looked for 
 Literature or written memorials, the record of tlieje 
 things was written down. J On the seaboard of this 
 wild land is a rim of grassy country, where cattle 
 can subsist, and men by means of them, and of what 
 the sea yields; and it seems they were poetic men 
 these, men who had deep thoughts in them, and ut- 
 tered musically their thoughts. Much would be lost 
 had Iceland not been burst up from the sea, not been 
 discovered by the Northmen ! The old Norse Poets 
 were many of them natives of Iceland. 
 
 Saemund, one of the early Christian Priests there, 
 who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Paganism, 
 collected certain of their old Pagan songs, just about 
 
24 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 becoming obsolete then, — Poems or Chants of a 
 mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious charac- 
 ter: this is what Norse critics call the Elder or Poetic 
 Edda. Edda, a word of uncertain etymology, is 
 thought to signify Ancestress. Snorro Sturleson, an 
 Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, 
 educated by this Saemund's grandson, took in hand 
 next, near a century afterwards, to put together, 
 among several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose 
 Synopsis of the whole mythology; elucidated by new 
 fragments of traditionary verse. A work constructed 
 really with great ingenuity, native talent, what one 
 might call 'unconscious art; altogether a perspicuous 
 clear work, pleasant reading still: this is the Younger 
 or prose Edda. ¥>y these and the numerous other 
 Sagas, mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, 
 Icelandic or not, which go on zealously in the North 
 to this day, it is possible to gain some direct insight 
 even yet; and see that old Norse system of Belief, as 
 it were, face to face. Let us forget that it is errone- 
 ous Religion; let us look at it as old Thought, and 
 try if we cannot sympathize with it somewhat. 
 
 The primary characteristic of this old Northland 
 -Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible 
 workings of Nature. Earnest simple recognition of 
 the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly 
 miraculous, stupendous, and divine. What we now 
 lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell 
 down in awe before, as Religion. The dark hostile 
 Powers of Nature they figure to themselves as "Jo- 
 tuns" Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demoniac 
 character. Frost, Fire, Sea, Tempest; these are 
 Jotuns. The friendly Powers again, as Summer- 
 heat, the Sun, are Gods. The empire of this Uni- 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 25 
 
 verse is divided between these two; they dwell apart, 
 in perennial internecine feud. The Gods dwell above 
 in Asgard, the Garden of the Asen or Divinities; 
 Jotunheim, a distant dark chaotic land, is the Home 
 of the Jotuns. 
 
 Curious all this; and not idle or inane, if we will 
 look at the foundation of it! The power of Fire, or 
 Flame, for instance, which we designate by some 
 trivial chymical name, thereby hiding from ourselves 
 the essential character of wonder that dwells in it as 
 in all things, is with these old Northmen, Loke, a 
 most swift subtle Demon, of the brood of the Jotuns. 
 The savages of the Ladrone Islands too (say some 
 Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never 
 had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you 
 sharply when you touched it, and lived there upon 
 dry wood. From us too no chymistry, if it had not 
 stupidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a won- 
 der. What is Flame? — Frost the old Norse Seer 
 discerns to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant 
 Thrym, Hrym, or Rime, the old word now nearly 
 obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify 
 hoar-frost. Rime was not then as now a dead chy- 
 mical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil; the mon- 
 strous Jotun Rime drove home his horses at night, sat 
 " combing their manes," — which horses were Hail- 
 clouds, or fleet Frost-winds. His Cows — no, not his, 
 but a kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are Ice- 
 bergs: this Hymir ( looks at the rock's' with his devil- 
 eye, and they split in the glance of it. 
 
 Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous 
 or resinous; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or 
 Thor, — God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The 
 thunder was his wrath; the gathering of the black 
 
26 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 clouds is the drawing down of Thor's angry brows; 
 the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rend- 
 ing Hammer flung from the hand of Thor: he urges 
 his loud chariot over the mountain-tops, — that is the 
 peal: wrathful he "blows in his red beard;" that is 
 the rustling storm-blast before the thunder begin. 
 Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just 
 and benignant, (whom the early Christian Mission- 
 aries found to resemble Christ,) is the Sun, — beauti- 
 fullest of visible things; wondrous too, and divine, 
 still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs!' But 
 perhaps the notablest god we hear tell of is one of 
 whom Grimm the German Etymologist finds trace: 
 the God Wtinsch, or Wish. The God Wish; who 
 could give us all that we wished! Is not this the 
 sincerest and yet rudest voice of the spirit of man? 
 The rudest ideal that man ever formed; which still 
 shows itself in the latest forms of our spiritual culture. 
 Higher considerations have to teach us that the God 
 Wish is not the true God. 
 
 Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only 
 for etymology's sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jotun 
 Aegir a very dangerous Jotun; and now to this day, 
 on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham barge- 
 men, when the River is in a certain flooded state, (a 
 kind of backwater, or eddying swirl it has, very dan- 
 gerous to them,) call it Eager they cry out, "Have 
 a care, there is the Eager coming!" Curious; that 
 word surviving, like the peak of a submerged world! 
 The oldest Nottingham bargemen had believed in 
 the God Aegir. Indeed our English blood too in good 
 part is Danish, Norse; or rather, at bottom, Danish 
 and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a 
 superficial one, — as of Heathen and Christian, or the 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 27 
 
 like. But all over our Island we are mingled largely 
 with Danes proper, — from the incessant invasions 
 there were: and this, of course, in a greater propor- 
 tion along the east coast ; and greatest of all, as I find, 
 in the North Country. From the Humber upwards, 
 all over Scotland, the speech of the common people 
 is still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism 
 has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are ci Nor- 
 mans," Northmen, — if that be any great beauty! — 
 
 Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. 
 Mark at present so much; what the essence of Scan- 
 dinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a recogni- 
 tion of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous 
 personal Agencies, — as Gods and Demons. Not 
 inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man 
 opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever- 
 stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse 
 System something very genuine, very great and man- 
 like. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different 
 from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Pagan- 
 ism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is 
 Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude, ear- 
 nest minds, fairly opened to the things about them ; 
 a face-to-faee and heart-to-heart inspection of the 
 things, — the first characteristic of all good Thought 
 in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as 
 in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthful- 
 ness and rustic strength,; a great rude sincerity,, dis- 
 closes itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful 
 Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come 
 down upon the Norse Gods "brewing ale" to hold 
 their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jotun; sending out 
 Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jotun 
 country; Thor, after many adventures, clapping 
 
2S THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking 
 off with it — quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reach- 
 ing down to his heels! A kind of vacant hugeness, 
 large, awkward gianthood, characterizes that Norse 
 System: enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, 
 stalking helpless with large uncertain strides. Con- 
 sider only their primary mythus of the Creation. 
 The Gods, having got the Giant Ymer slain, a Giant 
 made by " warm winds " and much confused work out 
 of the conflict of Frost and Fire, — determined on 
 constructing a world with him. His blood made the 
 Sea; his flesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones; 
 of his eyebrows they formed Asgard, their God's- 
 dwelling; his skull was the great blue vault of Im- 
 mensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. 
 What a Hyper-Brobdignagian business! Untamed 
 Thought, great, giantlike, enormous; — to be tamed 
 in due time into the compact greatness, not giantlike, 
 but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the 
 Shakspeares, the Goethes! — Spiritually as well as 
 bodily these men are our progenitors. 
 
 I like, too, that representation they have of the 
 Tree Igdrasil. All Life is figured by them as a Tree, 
 lgdrasil, the Ash-tree of Existence, has its roots deep 
 down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death; its trunk 
 reaches up heaven-high, spreads its boughs over the 
 whole Universe: it is the Tree of Existence. At the 
 foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit Three Nomas, 
 Fates, — the Past, Present, Future; watering its roots 
 from the Sacred Well. Its " boughs v with their bud- 
 dings and disleafings, — events, things suffered, things 
 done, catastrophes, — stretch through all lands and 
 times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every 
 fibre there an act or word? Its boughs are Histories 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 29 
 
 of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human 
 Existence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the 
 breath of Human passion rustling through it; — or 
 storm-tossed, the storm-wind howling through it like 
 the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of 
 Existence. It is the past, the present, and the future; 
 what was done, what is doing, what will be done; 
 "the infinite conjugation of the verb To do." Con- 
 sidering how human things circulate, each inextrica- 
 bly in communion with all, — how the word I speak to 
 you to-day is borrowed, not from Ulfila the Mcesogoth 
 only, but from all men since the first man began to 
 speak, — I find no similitude so true as this of a Tree. 
 Beautiful; altogether beautiful and great. The " Ma- 
 chine of the Universe," — alas, do but think of that in 
 contrast! 
 
 Well, it is strange enough this old Norse view of 
 Nature; different enough from what we believe of 
 Nature. Whence it specially came, one would not 
 like to be compelled to say very minutely! One 
 thing we may say: It came from the thoughts of 
 Norse men; — from the thought, above all, of the first 
 Norse man who had an original power of thinking. 
 The first Norse " man of genius," as we should call 
 him! / Innumerable men had passed by, across this 
 Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the 
 very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly 
 inquiring wonder, such as men only feel; — till the 
 great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; ] 
 whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumber- 
 ing capability of all into thought. It is ever the way 
 with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, 
 all men were not far from saying, were longing to 
 3 
 
30 THE HERO AS DIVINITY* 
 
 say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful 
 enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to 
 it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of 
 clay from night; — is it not, indeed, the awakening 
 for them from -no-being into being, from death into 
 life? ' We still honour such a man; call him Poet, 
 Genius and so forth : but to these wild men he was 
 a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected 
 blessing for them; a Prophet, a God! — Thought 
 once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds it- 
 self into a System of Thought; grows, in man after 
 man, generation after generation, — till its full stature 
 is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no 
 farther, but must give place to another. 
 
 For the Norse people, the man now named Odin, 
 and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. 
 A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body; a Hero, 
 of worth immeasurable; admiration for whom tran- 
 scending the known bounds, became adoration. Has 
 he not the power of articulate Thinking; and many 
 other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with bound- 
 less gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has 
 he not solved for them the Sphinx-enigma of this 
 Universe; given assurance to them of their own des- 
 tiny there? By him they know now what they have 
 to do here, what to look for hereafter. Existence 
 has become articulate, melodious by him ; he first has 
 made Life alive! — We may call this Odin the origin 
 of Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the 
 First Norse thinker bore while he was a man among 
 men. His view of the Universe once promulgated, 
 a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, 
 keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. 
 In all miuds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sym~ 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 31 
 
 pathetic ink; at his word it starts into visibility in all. 
 Nay, in every epoch of the world, the great event 
 parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker 
 in the world! — 
 
 One other thing we must not forget; it will ex- 
 plain a little, the confusion of these Norse Eddas. 
 They are not one coherent System of Thought; but 
 properly the summation of several successive systems. 
 All this of the old Norse Belief which is flung out 
 for us in one level of distance in the Edda, like a 
 picture painted on the same canvass, does not at all 
 stand so in the reality. It stands rather at all man- 
 ner of distances and depths, of successive generations 
 since the Belief first began. All Scandinavian, think- 
 ers, since the first of them, contributed to that Scan- 
 dinavian System of thought; in ever new elaboration 
 and addition, it is the combined work of them all. 
 What history it had, how it changed from shape to 
 shape, by one thinker's contribution after another, 
 till it got to the full final shape we see it under in 
 the Edda, no man will now ever know: its Councils of 
 Trebisond, Councils of Trent, Athanasiuses, Dantes, 
 Luthers, are sunk without echo in the dark night! 
 Only that it had such a history we can all know. 
 Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thing 
 he thought of was a contribution, accession, a change 
 or revolution made. Alas, the grandest "revolution" 
 of all, the one made by the man Odin himself, is not 
 this too sunk for us like the rest! Of Odin was his- 
 tory? Strange rather to reflect that he had a history! 
 That this Odin, in his wild Norse vesture, with his 
 wild beard and eyes, his rude Norse speech and ways, 
 was a man like us; with our sorrows, joys, with our 
 limbs, features; — intrinsically all one as we; and did 
 
32 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 such a work! But the work, much of it, has pe- 
 rished; the worker, all to the name. " Wednesday," 
 men will say, to-morrow: Odin's day! Of Odin there 
 exists no history: no document of it; no guess about 
 it worth repeating. 
 
 Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a 
 brief business style, writes down in his Heimskringla, 
 how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the black-Sea region, 
 with Twelve Peers, and a great people straitened for 
 room. How he led these Asen (Asiatics) of his out 
 of Asia; settled them in the North parts of Europe, 
 by warlike conquest; invented Letters, Poetry, and 
 so forth, — and came by and by to be worshipped as 
 Chief God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers 
 made into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like him- 
 self: Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus. 
 a very curious Northman of that same century, is still 
 more unhesitating; scruples not to find out an histo- 
 rical fact in every individual my thus, and writes it 
 down as a terrestrial event in Denmark or elsewhere. 
 Torfaeus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, 
 assigns by calculation a dale for it: Odin, he says, 
 came into Europe about the Year 70 before Christ. 
 Of all which, as grounded on mere uncertainties, 
 found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. 
 Far, very far beyond the Year 70 ! Odin's date, ad- 
 ventures, whole terrestrial history, figure and en- 
 vironment, are sunk from us for ever into unknown 
 thousands of years. 
 
 Nay, Grimm, the German Antiquary, goes so far 
 as to deny that any man Odin ever existed. He 
 proves it by Etymology. The word Wuotan, which 
 is the original form of Odin, a word spread, as name 
 of their chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 33 
 
 every where; this word, which connects itself, ac- 
 cording to Grimm, with^the Latin vadere, with the 
 English wade and such like, — means primarilv Move- 
 ment, Source of Movement,^Power; and is the fit 
 name of the highest god, not of any man. The word 
 signifies Divinity, he says, among the old Saxon, 
 German, and all Teutonic Nations; the adjectives 
 formed from it all signify divine, supreme, or some- 
 thing pertaining to the chief god. Like enough! We 
 must bow to Grimm in matters etymological. Let 
 us consider it fixed that Wuotan, means Wading, force 
 of Movement. And now still, what hinders it from 
 being the name of a Heroic Man and Mover, as well 
 as of a god ? As for the adjectives, and words formed 
 from it, — did not the Spaniards in their universal ad- 
 miration for Lope, get into the habit of saying i a 
 Lope flower,' < a Lope dama,' if the flower or woman 
 were of surpassing beauty ? Had this lasted, Lope 
 w T ould have grown, in Spain, to be an adjective sig- 
 nifying godlike also. Indeed Adam Smith, in his 
 Essay on Language, surmises that all adjectives what- 
 soever were formed precisely in that way : some very 
 green thing, chiefly notable for its greenness, got the 
 appellative name Green, and the next thing remarka- 
 ble for that quality, a tree for instance, was named 
 the green tree, — as we will say ' the steam coach,' 
 { four-horse coach,' or the like. All primary adjec- 
 tives, according to Smith, were formed in this way; 
 were at first substantives and things. We cannot 
 annihilate a man for etymologies like that! Surely 
 there was a First Teacher and Captain ; surely there 
 must have been an Odin, palpable to the sense at one 
 time; no adjective, but a real Hero of flesh and blood! 
 The voice of all tradition, history or echo of history, 
 .3* 
 
34 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 * 
 
 agrees with all that thought will teach one about it, 
 to assure us of this. 
 
 How the man Odin came to be considered a vod, 
 the chief god ? — that surely is a question which no- 
 body would wish to dogmatize upon. I have said, 
 his people knew no limits to their admiration of him; 
 they had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. 
 Fancy your own generous heart's-loveof some greatest 
 man expanding till it transcended all bounds, till it 
 filled and overflowed the whole field of your thought! 
 Or what if this man Odin, — since a great deep soul, 
 with the afflatus and mysterious tide of vision and 
 impulse rushing on him he knows not whence, is 
 ever an enigma, a kind of terror and wonder to him- 
 self, — should have felt that perhaps he was divine; 
 that he was some effluence of the " Wuotan," "Move- 
 ment" Supreme Power and Divinity, of whom to his 
 rapt vision all Nature was the awful Flame-image; 
 that some effluence of JVuotan dwelt here in him! 
 He was not necessarily false; he was but mistaken, 
 speaking the truest he knew. ■ A great soul, any sin- 
 cere soul, knows not what he is, — alternates between 
 the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all 
 things, the least measure — Himself !'. What others 
 take him for, and what he guesses that he may be; 
 these two items strangely act on one another, help to 
 determine one another. With all men reverently 
 admiring him; with his own w T ild soul full of noble 
 ardours and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness 
 and glorious new light; a divine Universe bursting 
 all into godlike beauty around him, and no man to 
 whom the like ever had befallen, what could he think 
 himself to be? "Wuotan?" All men answered, 
 "Wuotan!"— 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 35 
 
 And then consider what mere Time will do in such 
 cases; how if a man was great while living, he be- 
 comes tenfold greater when dead. What an enor- 
 mous earner a-obscnr a magnifier is Tradition ! • How a 
 thing grows in the human Memory, in the human 
 Imagination, when love, worship, and ajj that lies in 
 the human Heart, is there to encourage it* And in 
 the darkness, in the entire ignorance; without date 
 or document, no book, no Arundel-marble; only here 
 and there some dumb monumental cairn. Why, in 
 thirty or forty years, were there no books, any great 
 man would grow mythic, the contemporaries, who 
 had seen him, being once all dead. And in three 
 hundred years, and in three thousand years — ! — To 
 attempt theorizing on such matters would profit little: 
 they are matters which refuse to be theoremed and 
 diagramed; which Logic ought to know that she 
 cannot speak of. ^Enough for us to discern, far in 
 the uttermost distance, some gleam as of a small real- 
 light shining in the centre of that enormous camera- 
 obscura image; to discern that the centre of it all was 
 not a madness and nothing, but a sanity and some- 
 thing. . 
 
 This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the 
 Norse Mind, dark but living, waiting only for light; 
 this is to me the centre of the whole. How such light 
 will then shine out, and with wondrous thousandfold 
 expansion spread itself, in forms and colours, depends 
 not on it, so much as on the National Mind recipient 
 of it. The colours and forms of your light will be 
 those of the cut-glass it has to shine through. — Curi- 
 ous to think how, for every man, any the truest fact 
 is modelled by the nature of the man ! I said, The 
 .earnest man, speaking to his brother men, must al- 
 
36 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 ways have stated what seemed to him a fact, a real 
 Appearance of nature. But the way in which such 
 Appearance or fact shaped itself, — what sort of fact 
 it became for him, — was and is modified by his own 
 laws of thinking;! deep, subtle, but universal, ever- 
 operating laws.* The world of nature, for every man, 
 is the Fantasy of Himself; this world is the multiplex 
 "Image of his own Dream." Who knows to what 
 unnameable subtleties of spiritual law all these Pagan 
 Fables owe their shape! The number Twelve, di- 
 visiblest of all, which could be halved, quartered, 
 parted into three, into six, the most remarkable num- 
 ber, — this was enough to determine the Signs of the 
 Zodiac, the number of Odin's Sons, and innumerable 
 other Twelves. Any vague rumour of number had a 
 tendency to settle itself into Twelve. So with regard 
 to every other matter. And quite unconsciously too, 
 — with no notion of building up "Allegories !" But 
 the fresh clear glance of those First Ages would be 
 prompt in discerning the secret relations of things, 
 and wholly open to obey these. Schiller finds in 
 the Cestus of Venus an everlasting aesthetic truth as 
 to the nature of all Beauty; curious: — but he is care- 
 ful not to insinuate that the old Greek Mythists had 
 any notion of lecturing about the " Philosophy of 
 
 Criticism !" On the whole, we must leave those 
 
 boundless regions. Cannot we conceive that Odin 
 was a reality? Error indeed, error enough: but sheer 
 falsehood, idle fables, allegory aforethought, — we will 
 not believe that our Fathers believed in these. 
 
 Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. 
 Runes, and the miracles of "magic" he worked by 
 them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes are 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 37 
 
 the Scandinavian Alphabet; suppose Odin to have 
 been the inventor of Letters, as well as" magic/' 
 among that people! It is the greatest invention man 
 has ever made, this of marking down the unseen 
 thought that is in him by written characters. It is a 
 kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the 
 first. You remember the astonishment and incredu- 
 lity of Atahualpa the Peruvian King; how he made 
 the Spanish Soldier who was guarding him scratch 
 Dios on his thumb-nail, that he might try the next 
 soldier with it, to ascertain whether such a miracle 
 was possible. If Odin brought letters among his 
 people, he might work magic enough ! 
 
 Writing by Runes has some air of being original 
 among the Norsemen ; not a Phenician Alphabet, 
 but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us far- 
 ther that Odin invented Poetry; the music of human 
 speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of 
 it. ; Transport yourselves into the early childhood of 
 nations; the first beautiful morning-light of our Eu- 
 rope, when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of 
 a great sunrise, and our Europe was first beginning 
 to think, to be ! Wonder, hope; infinite radiance of 
 hope and wonder, as of a young child's thoughts, in 
 the hearts of these strong men ! Strong sons of 
 Nature; and here was not only a wild Captain and 
 Fighter; discerning with his wild flashing eyes what 
 to do, with his wild lion-heart daring and doing it; 
 but a Poet too, all that we mean by a Poet, Prophet, 
 great devout Thinker and Inventor, — as the truly 
 Great Man ever is. .' A Heroes a Hero at all points;.- 
 in the soul and thought of him first of all. This Odin 
 in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. 
 A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, 
 
38 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 and man's Life here, and utter a great word about it. 
 A Hero, as I say, in his own rude manner;; a wise, 
 gifted, noble-hearted man. * And now, if we still ad- 
 mire such a man beyond all others, what must these 
 wild Norse souls, first awakened into thinking, have 
 made of him! To them, as yet without names for 
 it, he was noble and noblest; Hero, Prophet, God; 
 Wuotan the greatest of all. Thought is Thought, 
 howsoever it speak or spell itself. Intrinsically, I 
 conjecture, this Odin must have been of the same 
 sort of stuff as the greatest kind of men. A great 
 thought in the wild deep heart of him! The rough 
 words he articulated, are they not the rudimental 
 roots of these English words we still use? • He 
 worked so in that obscure element. But he was as 
 a light kindled into it; a light of intellect, rude No- 
 bleness of heart, the only light we have yet; a Hero, 
 as I say: and he had to shine there, and make his 
 obscure element a little lighter, — as is still the task 
 of us all.! 
 
 We will fancy him to be the Type-North-man: 
 the finest Teuton whom that race had yet produced. 
 The rude Norse heart burst up into boundless admira- 
 tion round him; into adoration. He is as a root of 
 so many great things; the fruit of him is found grow- 
 ing from deep thousands of years, over the whole 
 field of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I 
 said, is it not still Odin's day? Wednesday, Wans- 
 horough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin grew into 
 England too, these are still leaves from that root! 
 He was the Chief God to all the Teutonic Peoples; 
 their Pattern Norseman, in such way did they admire 
 their Pattern Northman; that was the fortune he 
 had in the world. 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 39 
 
 Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished 
 utterly, there is this huge Shadow of him which still 
 projects itself over the whole History of his People. 
 For this Odin once admitted to be God, we can un- 
 derstand well that the whole Scandinavian Scheme 
 of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it might be- 
 fore have been, would now begin to develop itself 
 altogether differently, and grow thenceforth in a 
 new manner. What this Odin saw into, and taught 
 with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic 
 People laid to heart and carried forward.; His way 
 of thought became their way of thought: — such, 
 under new conditions, is the history of every great 
 thinker still.' In gigantic confused lineaments, like 
 some enormous camera-obscura shadow thrown up- 
 wards from the dead deeps of the Past, and covering 
 the whole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandina- 
 vian Mythology in some sort the Portraiture of this 
 man Odin? The gigantic image of his natural face, 
 legible or not legible there, expanded and confused 
 in that manner! Ah, Thought, I say, is always 
 Thought. No great man lives in vain. The History 
 of the world is but the Biography of great men. 
 
 To me there is something very touching in this 
 primeval figure of Heroism; in such artless, help- 
 less, but hearty entire reception of a Hero by his 
 fellow-men. ; Never so helpless in shape, it is the 
 noblest of feelings, and a feeling in some shape or 
 other perennial as man himself. If I could show, in 
 any measure, what I feel deeply for a long time now, 
 That it is the vital element of manhood, the soul of 
 man's history here in our world, — it would be the 
 chief use of this discoursing at present. We do not 
 now call our great men Gods, nor admire without 
 
40 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 limit; ah no, wfth limit enough!: But if we have no 
 great men, or do not admire at all, — that were a still 
 worse case. 
 
 The poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole 
 Norse way of looking at the Universe, and adjusting 
 oneself there, has an indestructible merit for us. A 
 rude child-like way of recognising the divineness of 
 Nature, the divineness of Man; most rude, yet heart- 
 felt, robust, giantlike; betokening what a giant of 
 a man this child would yet grow to! It was a truth, 
 and is none. *Ajt is not as the half-dumb stifled voice 
 of the long buried generations of our own Fathers, 
 calling out of the depths of ages to us, in whose veins 
 their blood still runs: " This then, this is what we 
 made of the world: this is all the image and notion 
 we could form to ourselves of this great mystery of a 
 Life and Universe. J Despise it not. You are raised 
 high above it, to large free scope of vision; but you 
 too are not yet at the top. No, your notion too, so 
 much enlarged, is but a partial, imperfect one; that 
 matter is a thing no man will ever, in time or out of 
 time, comprehend; after thousands of years of ever- 
 new expansion, man will find himself but struggling 
 to comprehend again a part of it: the thing is larger 
 than man, not to be comprehended by him; an Infi- 
 nite thing!" 
 
 The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all 
 Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the 
 divineness of Nature; sincere communion of man 
 with the mysterious invisible Powers v-isibly seen at 
 work in the world round him. This, I should say, is 
 more sincerely done in the Scandinavian than in any 
 Mythology I know. Sincerity is the great charac- 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 41 
 
 teristic of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) con- 
 soles us for the total want of old Grecian grace. 
 2 Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that 
 these old Northmen were looking into Nature with 
 open eye and soul: most earnest, honest; childlike, 
 and yet manlike; with a great-hearted simplicity 
 and depth and freshness, in a true, loving, admiring, 
 unfearing way. A right valiant, true old race of men. 
 Such recognition of Nature one finds to be the chief 
 element of Paganism: recognition of Man and his 
 Moral Duty, though this too is not wanting, comes to 
 be the chief element only in purer forms of religion. 
 Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in 
 Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious 
 development of Mankind. Man first puts himself in 
 relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders and 
 worships over those; not till a later epoch does he 
 discern that all Power is Moral, that "the grand point 
 is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou 
 shall and Thou shall not. * 
 
 With regard to all these fabulous delineations in 
 the Edda, I will remark, moreover, as indeed was 
 already hinted, that most probably they must have 
 been of much newer date; most probably, even from 
 the first, were comparatively idle for the old Norse- 
 men, and as it were a kind of Poetic sport. Allegory 
 and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be 
 religious Faith; the Faith itself must first be there, 
 then Allegory enough will gather round it, as the fit 
 body round its soul. The Norse Faith, I can well 
 suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while it 
 lay mainly in the silent state, and had not yet much 
 to say about itself, still less to sing 
 
 Among those shadowy Edda matters, amid all that 
 4 
 
48 THE HERO AS DIVINITI". 
 
 fantastic congeries of assertions, and traditions, hi 
 their musical Mythologies, the main practical belief 
 a man could have was probably not much more than 
 this: of the Valkyrs and the Hall of Odin; of an 
 inflexible Destiny, and that the one thing needful for 
 a man was to be brave. The Valkyrs are choosers of 
 the Slain; a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless 
 trying to bend or soften,' has appointed who is to be 
 slain: this was a fundamental point for the Norse 
 believer; — as indeed it is for all earnest men every 
 where, for a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. ' 
 It lies at the basis this for every such man; it is the 
 woof out of which his whole system of thought is 
 woven. The Valkyrs; and then that these Choosers 
 lead the brave to a heavenly Hall of Odin; only the 
 base and slavish being thrust elsewhither, into the 
 realms of Hela the Death-Goddess: I take this to 
 have been the soul of the whole Norse Belief. They 
 understood in their heart that it was indispensable to 
 be brave; that Odin would have no favour for them, 
 but despise and thrust them out if they were not 
 brave. Consider too whether there is not something 
 in this ! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as 
 in that, the duty of being brave. Valour is still value. 
 The first duty for a man is still that of subduing Fear. 
 We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till 
 then. A man's acts are slavish, not true, but specious ; 
 his very thoughts are false, he thinks too as a slave 
 and coward, till he have got fear under his feet. 
 Odin's creed, if we disentangle the real kernel of it, is 
 true to this hour. A man shall and must be valiant; he 
 must march forward, and quit himself like a man, — 
 trusting imperturbably in the appointment and choice 
 of the upper Powers; and on the whole not fear at all. 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 43 
 
 Now and always, the completeness of his victory- 
 over Fear will determine how much of a man he is. 
 
 It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of 
 the old Northmen. Snorro tells us they thought it 
 a shame and misery not to die in battle; and if natu- 
 ral death seemed to be coming on, they would cut 
 wounds in their flesh, that Odin might receive them 
 as warriors slain. Old kings, about to die, had their 
 body laid into a ship; the ship sent forth, with sails 
 set and slow fire burning in it; that once out at sea, 
 it might blaze up in flame, and in such manner bury 
 worthily the old hero, at once in the sky and in the 
 ocean! Wild, bloody valour; yet valour of its kind ; 
 better, I say, than none. In the old Sea-kings too, 
 what an indomitable rugged energy! Silent, with 
 closed lips, as I fancy them, unconscious that they 
 were specially brave; defying the wild ocean with 
 its monsters, and all men and things ; — progenitors of 
 our own Blakes and Nelsons. No Homer sang these 
 Norse Sea-Kings; but Agamemnon's was a small au- 
 dacity, and of small fruit in the world, to some of 
 them ; — to Hrolf's of Normandy, for instance! Hrolf, 
 or Rollo, Duke of Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has 
 a share in governing England at this hour. 
 
 Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea- 
 roving and battling, through so many generations. 
 It needed to be ascertained which was the strongest 
 kind of men; who were to be ruler over whom. 
 Among the Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some 
 who got the title Wood cutter; Forest-felling Kings. 
 Much lies in that. I suppose at bottom many of 
 them were forest-fellers as well as fighters, though 
 the Skalds talk mainly of the latter, — misleading 
 certain critics not a little; for no nation of men could 
 
44 THE HERO AS DIVINITY". 
 
 ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce 
 enough come out of that! I suppose the right good 
 fighter was oftenest also the right good forest-feller, — 
 the right good improver, discerner. doer and worker 
 in every kind; for true valour, different enough from 
 ferocity, is the basis of all. A more legitimate kind 
 of valour is that; showing itself against the untamed 
 Forests and dark brute Powers of Nature, to conquer 
 Nature for us. In the same direction have not we 
 their descendants since carried it far? May such 
 valour last for ever with us ! 
 
 That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice 
 and heart, with an impressiveness out of Heaven, 
 told his People the infinite importance of Valour, 
 how man thereby became a god ; and that his People, 
 feeling a response to it in their own hearts, believed 
 this message of his, and thought it a message out of 
 Heaven, and him a Divinity for telling it them: this 
 seems to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Reli- 
 gion, from which all manner of mythologies, symbolic 
 practices, speculations, allegories, songs, and sages 
 would naturally grow. Grow, — how strangely! I 
 called it a small light shining and shaping in the 
 huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness 
 itself was alive; consider that. It was the eager in- 
 articulate uninstructed Mind of the whole Norse 
 People, longing only to become articulate, to go on 
 articulating ever farther ! The living doctrine grows, 
 grows; — like a Banyan-tree; the first seed is the es- 
 sential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the 
 earth, becomes a new root; and so, in endless com- 
 plexity, we have a whole wood, a whole jungle, one 
 seed the parent of it all. Was not the whole Norse 
 Religion, accordingly, in some sense, what we called 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 45 
 
 " the enormous shadow of this man's likeness ?" Cri- 
 tics trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses, of 
 the Creation and such like, with those of the Hindoos. 
 TheCow Adumbla, "licking the rime from the rocks," 
 has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, trans- 
 ported into frosty countries. Probably enough; in- 
 deed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have 
 a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest 
 times. Thought does not die, but only is changed. 
 The first man that began to think in this Planet of 
 ours, he was the beginner of all. And then the 
 second man, and the third man; — nay every true 
 Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men 
 his way of thought, spreads a shadow of his own 
 likeness over sections of the History of the world. 
 
 Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this 
 Norse Mythology I have not room to speak; nor does 
 it concern us much. Some wild Prophecies we have, 
 as the Havamal in. the Elder Bddai of a rapt, earnest, 
 sibylline sort. But they were comparatively an idle 
 adjunct of the matter, men who as it were but toyed 
 with the matter, these later Skalds; and it is their 
 songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, I sup- 
 pose, they would go on singing, poetically symbo- 
 lizing, as our modern Painters paint, when it was no 
 longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart 
 at all. This is every where to be well kept in mind, 
 
 Gray's fragments of Norse lore, at any rate, will 
 give one no notion of it; — any more than Pope will 
 of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace of 
 black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as 
 Gray gives it us: no; rough as the North rocks, as 
 the Iceland deserts, it is; with a heartiness, homeli- 
 4* 
 
46 THE HERO AS DIVINITY, 
 
 ness, even a tint of good humour and robust mirth in 
 the middle of these fearful things. The strong old 
 Norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities; 
 they had not time to tremble. I like much their 
 robust simplicity; their veracity, directness of con- 
 ception. Thor "draws down his brows" in a veritable 
 Norse rage; ''grasps his hammer till the knuckles grow 
 ichite" Beautiful traits of pity too, an honest pity. 
 Balder "the white God" dies; the beautiful, benig- 
 nant; he is the Sun-god. They try all nature for a 
 remedy; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends 
 Hermode to seek or see him: nine days and nine 
 nights he rides, through gloomy deep valleys, a laby- 
 rinth of gloom; arrives at the Bridge with its gold 
 roof: the Keeper says, "Yes, Balder did pass here; 
 but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far 
 towards the North." Hermode rides on; leaps Hell- 
 gate, Hela's gate; does see Balder, and speaks with 
 him: Balder cannot be delivered. Inexorable! Hela 
 will not, for Odin or any God, give him up. The 
 beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His Wife 
 had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. 
 They shall for ever remain there. He sends his ring 
 to Odin; Nanna his wife sends her thimble to Frigga, 
 as a remembrance. — Ah me! — 
 
 For indeed Valour is the fountain of pity too; — of 
 Truth, and all that is great and good in man. The 
 robust homely vigour of the Norse heart attaches 
 one much, in these delineations. Is it not a trait of 
 right honest strength, says Uhland, who has written 
 a fine Essay on Thor, that the old Norse heart finds 
 its friend in the Thunder-god? That it is not fright- 
 ened away by his thunder; but finds that Summer- 
 heat, the beautiful noble summer, must and will have 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 47 
 
 thunder withal ! The Norse heart loves this Thor and 
 his hammer-bolt; sports with him. Thor is Sum- 
 mer-heat; the god of Peaceable Industry as well as 
 Thunder. He is the Peasant's friend; his true hench- 
 man and attendant is Thialfi, Manual Labour. Thor 
 himself engages in all manner of rough manual work, 
 scorns no business for its plebeianism; is ever and 
 anon travelling to the country of the Jotuns, harry- 
 ing those chaotic Frost-monsters, subduing them, at 
 least straightening and damaging them. There is a 
 great broad humour in some of these things. 
 
 Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek 
 Hymir's Caldron, that the Gods may brew beer. 
 Hymir the huge Giant enters, his gray beard all full 
 of hoar-frost; splits pillars with the very glance of his 
 eye; Thor, after much rough tumult, snatches the 
 Pot, claps it on his head; the "handles of it reach 
 down to his heels." The Norse Skald has a kind of 
 loving sport with Thor. This is the Hymir whose 
 cattle, the critics have discovered, are Ice-bergs. 
 Huge untutored Brobdignag genius, — needing only 
 to be tamed ' down; into Shakspeares, Dantes, 
 Goethes ! It is all gone now, that old Norse work, 
 . — Thor the Thunder-god changed into Jack the Gi- 
 ant-killer; but the mind that made it is here yet. 
 How strangely things grow, and die, and do not die! 
 There are twigs of that great world-tree of Norse 
 Belief, still curiously traceable. This poor Jack of 
 the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, 
 coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one, 
 Childe Etin in the Scottish Ballads is a Norse my- 
 thus; Etin was a Jotun. Nay, Shakspeare's Hamlet 
 is a twig too of this same world-tree ; there seems no 
 doubt of that. Hamlet, Jlmleth, I find, is really a 
 
48 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 mythic personage; and his Tragedy, of the poisoned 
 Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, and the 
 rest, is a Norse my thus ! Old Saxo, as his wont was, 
 made it a Danish history; Shakspeare, out of Saxo, 
 made it what we see. That is a twig of the world- 
 tree that has grown, 1 think; — by nature or accident 
 that one has grown. 
 
 In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in them, 
 an inward perennial truth and greatness, — as, indeed, 
 all must have that can very long preserve itself by 
 tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body 
 and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. 
 There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy trace- 
 able in these old hearts. A great free glance into 
 the very deeps of thought. J They seem to have seen, 
 these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has 
 taught all men in all ages, That this world is after 
 all but a show, — a phenomenon or appearance, no 
 real thing. All deep souls see into that, — the Hindoo 
 Mythologist, the German Philosopher, — the Shak- 
 speare, the earnest Thinker wherever he may be: 
 
 "We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!" 
 
 One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the Outer 
 Garden, central seat of Jotun-land,) is remarkable 
 in this respect. Thialfi was with him, and Loke. 
 After various adventures, they entered upon Giant- 
 land; wandered over plains, wild uncultivated places, 
 among stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a 
 house; and as the door, which indeed formed one 
 whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It 
 was a simple habitation; one large hall, altogether 
 empty. They stayed there. Suddenly in the dead of 
 the night, loud noises alarmed them. Thor grasped 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 49 
 
 his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. 
 His companions within ran hither and thither in their 
 terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall; they 
 found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. 
 Neither had Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning 
 it turned out that the noise had been only the snoring 
 of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant 
 Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and 
 this that they took for a house was merely his Glove, 
 thrown aside there; the door was the Glove-wrist; the 
 little closet they had fled into was the thumb! Such 
 a glove; — I remark too that it had not fingers as ours 
 have, but only a thumb, and the rest undivided: a 
 most ancient, rustic glove ! 
 
 Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; 
 Thor, however, had his own suspicions, did not like 
 the ways of Skrymir; determined at night to put an 
 end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he 
 struck down into the Giant's face a right thunderbolt 
 blow, of force to rend rocks. The Giant merely 
 awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf fall? 
 Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; 
 a better blow than before ; but the Giant merely mur- 
 mured, Was that a grain of sand ? Thor's third 
 stroke was with both his hands (the " knuckles white" 
 I suppose,) and seemed to dint deep into Skrymir's 
 visage; but he merely checked his snore, and re- 
 marked, There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, 
 I think ; what is it they have dropped ? — At the gate 
 of Utgard, a place so high, that you had to "strain your 
 neck bending back to see the top of it," Skrymir went 
 his ways. Thor and his companions were admitted; 
 invited to take share in the games going on. To Thor, 
 for his part, they handed a Drinking-horn 
 
50 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 
 
 common feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one 
 draught. Long and fiercely, three times over Thor 
 drank; but made hardly any impression. He was a 
 weak child, they told him: could he lift that Cat he 
 saw there? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his 
 whole godlike strength could not; he bent up the 
 creature's back, could not raise its feet off the ground, 
 could at the utmost raise one foot. Why, you are no 
 man, said the Utgard people; there is an Old Woman 
 that will wrestle you! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized 
 his haggard Old Woman; but could not throw her. 
 
 And now on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun 
 escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor : 
 " You are beaten then: — yet be not so much ashamed; 
 there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn 
 you tried to drink was the Sea; you did make it ebb; 
 but who could drink that, the bottomless! The Cat 
 you would have lifted, — why, that is the Mldgard- 
 snake, the great World-serpent which, tail in mouth, 
 girds and keeps up the whole created world; had you 
 torn that up, the world must have rushed to ruin. As 
 for the Old Woman, she was Time, Old Age, Dura- 
 tion; with her what can wrestle? No man or no god 
 with her; gods or men, she prevails over all! And 
 then those three strokes you struck, — look at these 
 three valleys; your three strokes made these!" Thor 
 looked at his attendant Jotun: it was Skrymir; — it 
 was, say Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky Earth in 
 person, and that glove-house was some Earth-cavern! 
 But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its sky-high 
 gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite thcm> 
 had gone to air; only the Giant's voice was heard 
 mocking: "Better come no more to Jotunheim!" — 
 
 This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 51 
 
 play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout : but 
 as a mythus, is there not real antique Norse gold in it? 
 More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than 
 in many a famed Greek mythus shaped far better! A 
 great broad Brobdignag grin of true humour in this 
 Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, 
 as the rainbow on the black tempest: only a right 
 valiant heart is capable of that. It is the grim humour 
 of our own Ben Jonson, rare old Ben; runs in the 
 blood of us, I fancy ; for one catches tones of it, under 
 a still other shape, out of the American Backwoods. 
 
 That is also a very striking conception that of the 
 Ragnarok, Consummation, or Twilight of the Gods. 
 It is in the Havamal song; seemingly a very old, 
 prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine 
 Powers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest 
 and partial victory by the former, meet at last in uni- 
 versal world-embracing wrestle and duel; World- 
 serpent against Thor, strength against strength; 
 mutually extinctive; and ruin, "twilight" sinking 
 into darkness, swallows the created Universe. The 
 old Universe with its Gods is sunk; but it is not final 
 death : there is to be a new Heaven and a new Earth; 
 a higher supreme God, and Justice to reign among 
 men. Curious : this law of mutation, which also is 
 a law written in man's inmost thought, had been 
 deciphered by these old earnest Thinkers in their 
 rude style; and how, though all dies, and even gods 
 die, yet all death is but a Phoenix fire-death, and 
 new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the 
 fundamental Law of Being for a creature made of 
 Time, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men 
 have seen into it; may still see into it. 
 
 And now, connected with this, let us glance at the 
 
52 THE HERO AS^ DIVINITY. 
 
 last my thus of the appearance of Thor; and end there. 
 I fancy it to be the latest in date of all these fables; a 
 sorrowing protest against the advance of Christian- 
 it}'', — set forth reproachfully by some Conservative 
 Pagan. King Olaf has been harshly blamed for his 
 over-zeal in introducing Christianity; surely I should 
 have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that! 
 He paid dear enough for it; he died by the revolt of 
 his Pagan people, in battle, in the year 1033, at 
 Stickelstad, near that Drontheim, where the chief 
 Cathedral of the North has now stood for many cen- 
 turies, dedicated gratefully to his memory as Saint 
 Olaf. The mythus about^Thor is to this effect. King 
 Olaf, the Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit 
 escort along the shore of Norway, from haven to 
 haven: dispensing justice, or doing other royal work: 
 on leaving a certain haven, it is found that a stranger, 
 of grave eyes and aspect, red beard, of stately robust 
 figure has stepped in. The courtiers address him ; his 
 answers surprise by their pertinency and depth : at 
 length he is brought to the King. The stranger's con- 
 versation here is not less remarkable, as they sail 
 along the beautiful shore; but after some time, he 
 addresses King Olaf thus: " Yes, King Olaf, it is all 
 beautiful, with the sun shining on it there; green, 
 fruitful, a right fair home for you; and many a sore day 
 had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jotuns, be- 
 fore he could make it so. And now you seem minded 
 to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care!" said the 
 stranger, drawing down his brows; — and when they 
 looked again, he was nowhere to be found. — This is 
 the last appearance of Thor on the stage of this world ! 
 Do we not see well enough how the Fable might 
 arise, without unveracity on the part of any one: it is 
 
LECT. I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. 53 
 
 the way most Gods have come to appear among men: 
 thus if in Pindar's time " Neptune was seen once at 
 the Nemean Games," what was this Neptune too but 
 a " stranger of noble grave aspect," — Jit to be " seen!" 
 There is something pathetic, tragic for me, in this last 
 voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the whole 
 Norse world has vanished; and will not return ever 
 again. In like fashion to that, pass away the high- 
 est things. All things that have been in this world, 
 all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish: we 
 have our sad farewell to give them. 
 
 That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly 
 impressive Consecration of Valour, (so we may define 
 it,) suffice for these old valiant Northmen. Conse- 
 cration of Valour is not a bad thing! We will take it 
 for good, so far as it goes. Neither is there no use in 
 knowing something about this old Paganism of our 
 Fathers. Unconsciously, and combined with higher 
 things, it is in us yet, that Old Faith withal! To 
 know it consciously, brings us into closer and clearer 
 relation with the Past, — with our own Possessions in 
 the Past. jjFor the whole Past, as I keep repeating, 
 is the possession of the Present; the Past had always 
 something true, and is a precious possession. In a 
 different time, in a different place, it is always some 
 other side of our common Human Nature that has 
 been developing itself. The actual True is the sum 
 of all these; not any one of them by itself consti- 
 tutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. 
 Better to know them all than misknow them. " To 
 which of these Three Religions do you especially ad- 
 here?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. " To all the 
 Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three; for 
 they by their union first constitute the True Religion." 
 5 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 [Friday, 8th May, 1840.] 
 THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET! ISLAM. 
 
 From the first rude times of Paganism among the 
 Scandinavians of the North, we advance to a very- 
 different epoch of religion, among a very different 
 people; Mahometan ism among the Arabs. A great 
 change; what a change and progress is indicated 
 here, in the universal condition and thoughts of men! 
 
 The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his 
 fellow-men; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. 
 It is the second phasis of Hero-worship; the first or 
 oldest, we may say, has passed away without return; 
 in the history of the world there will not again be any 
 man, never so great, whom his fellow-men will take 
 for a god. Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set 
 of human beings ever really think the man they saw 
 there standing beside them a god, the maker of this 
 world? Perhaps not: it was usually some man they 
 remembered or had seen. But neither can this, any 
 more, be. The great man is not recognised hence- 
 forth as a god any more. 
 
 It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great 
 Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times diffi- 
 cult to know what he is, or how to account of him 
 and receive him! The most significant feature in 
 the history of an epoch is the manner it has of wel- 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 55 
 
 coining a Great Man. Ever, to the true instincts of 
 men, there is something godlike in him. Whether 
 they shall take him to be a god, to be a prophet, or 
 what they shall take him to be? that is ever a grand 
 question; by their way of answering that, we shall 
 see, as through a little window, into the heart of 
 these men's spiritual condition. For at bottom the 
 Great Man, as he comes from the hand of Nature, is 
 ever the same kind of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson, 
 Burns; I hope to make it appear that these are all 
 originally of one stuff; that only by the world's re- 
 ception of them, and the shapes they assume, are 
 they so immeasurably diverse. The worship of Odin 
 astonishes us, — to fall prostrate before the great Man, 
 into deliquium of love and wonder over him, and feel 
 in their heart that he was a denizen of the skies, a 
 god! This was imperfect enough: but to welcome, 
 for example, a Burns as we did, was that what we 
 can call perfect? The most precious gift that Heaven 
 can give to the Earth; a man of " genius" as we call 
 it; the soul of a man actually sent down from the 
 skies with a God's-message to us, — this we waste 
 away as an idle artificial firework, sent to arnuse us a 
 little, and sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectuality: 
 such reception of a great man I do not call perfect 
 either! Looking into the heart of the thing, one may 
 perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phenomenon, 
 betokening still sadder imperfections in mankind's 
 ways, than the Scandinavian method itself! To fall 
 into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admira- 
 tion, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irra- 
 tional, supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still 
 worse! — It is a thing for ever changing, this of Hero- 
 worship; different in each age, difficult to do well in 
 
56 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 any age. Indeed the heart of the whole business of 
 the age, one may say, is to do it well. 
 
 We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent 
 prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. 
 He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do 
 esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no dan- 
 ger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean 
 to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way 
 to get at his secret: let us try to understand what he 
 meant with the world; what the world meant and 
 means with him, will then be a more answerable 
 question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, 
 that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incar- 
 nate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and 
 fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. 
 The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round 
 this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only. When 
 Pococke inquired of Grotius, Where the proof was of 
 that story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from 
 Mahomet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to 
 him? Grotius answered that there was no proof! It 
 is really time to dismiss all that. The word this man 
 spoke has been the life-guidance now of one hundred 
 and eighty millions of men these twelve hundred 
 years. These hundred and eighty millions were 
 made by God as w r ell as we. A greater number of 
 God's creatures believe in Mahomet's w r ord at this 
 hour than in any other word whatever. Are we to 
 suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual 
 legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the 
 Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, 
 cannot form any such supposition. I will believe 
 most things sooner than that. One would be entirely 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 57 
 
 at a loss what to think of this world at all, if quackery 
 so grew and were sanctioned here. 
 
 Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we 
 would attain to knowledge of any thing in God's true 
 Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly! They are 
 the product of an Age of Skepticism; indicate the 
 saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the 
 souls of men; more godless theory, I think, was never 
 promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a 
 religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick 
 house. If he do not know and follow truly the 
 properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he 
 works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish- 
 heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge 
 a hundred and eighty millions; it will fall straight- 
 way. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, 
 be verily in communion with Nature and the truth of 
 things, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all! 
 Speciosities are specious — ah me ! — a Cagliostro, 
 many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do pros- 
 per by their quackery, for a day. It is like a forged 
 bank-note; they get it passed out of their worthless 
 hands: others, not they have to smart for it. Nature 
 bursts up in fire-flames, French Revolutions and such 
 like, proclaiming with terrible veracity that forged 
 notes are forged. 
 
 But of a Great Man especially, of him I will ven- 
 ture to assert that it is incredible he should have been 
 other than true. It seems to me the primary foun- 
 dation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. 
 No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man 
 adequate to do any thing, but is first' of all in right 
 earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should 
 say sincerity, a deep, great genuine sincerity, is the 
 5* 
 
58 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 first characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not 
 the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is 
 a very poor matter indeed; — a shallow braggart con- 
 scious sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The 
 Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak 
 of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious 
 rather of «?2sincerity; for what man can walk accu- 
 rately by the law of truth for one day? No, the 
 Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from 
 that, perhaps does not ask himself if he is so; I 
 would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on 
 himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great 
 Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he 
 cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. 
 His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. 
 Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is 
 this Universe to him. Though all men should forget 
 its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At 
 all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; 
 undeniable, there, there! — I wish you to take this as 
 my primary definition of a great Man. A little man 
 may have this, it is competent to all men that God 
 has made; but a Great Man cannot be without it. 
 
 Such a man is what we call an original man: he 
 comes to us at first hand. A messenger he, sent from 
 the Infinite Unknown with tidings to us. We may 
 call him Poet, Prophet, God; — in one way or other, 
 we all feel that the words he utters are as no other 
 man's words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things; — 
 he lives, and has to live, in daily communion with 
 that. Hearsays cannot hide it from him ; he is blind, 
 homeless, miserable, following hearsays; it glares in 
 upon him. Really his utterances, are they not a 
 kind of "revelation;" — what we must call such for 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 59 
 
 want of some other name? It is from the heart of 
 the world that he comes; he is portion of the primal 
 reality of things. God has made many revelations: 
 hut this man too, has not God made him, the latest 
 and newest of all? The " inspiration of the Almighty 
 giveth him understanding:" we must listen before all 
 to him. 
 
 This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider 
 as an Inanity and Theatrically, a poor conscious am- 
 bitious schemer; we cannot conceive him so. The 
 rude message he delivered was a real one withal; an 
 earnest confused voice from the unknown deep. The 
 man's words were not false, nor his workings here 
 below: no Inanity and Simulacrum; a fiery mass of 
 Life cast up from the great bosom of Nature herself. 
 To kindle the world; the world's Maker had ordered 
 it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, insince- 
 rities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well 
 proved against him, shake this primary fact about him. 
 
 On the whole, we make too much of faults; the 
 details of the business hide the real centre of it. 
 Faults? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to 
 be conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, 
 one would think, might know better. Who is called 
 there " the man according to God's own heart?" Da- 
 vid, the Hebrew king, had fallen into sins enough; 
 blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And 
 thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your 
 man according to God's heart? The sneer, I must 
 say, seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, 
 what are the outward details of a life; if the inner 
 secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baf- 
 fled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten? " It is 
 
60 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 not in man that walketh to direct his steps." Of all 
 acts is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? 
 The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious 
 consciousness of no sin; — that is death; the heart so 
 conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and 
 fact; is dead: it is " pure" as dead dry sand is pure. 
 David's life and history, as written for us in those 
 Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever 
 given of a man's moral progress and warfare here 
 below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the 
 faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards 
 what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore 
 baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle 
 never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true un- 
 conquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human na- 
 ture! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 
 " a succession of falls?" Man can do no other. In this 
 wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; 
 now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, re- 
 pentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, 
 struggle again still onwards. That his struggle be a 
 faithful unconquerable one: that is the question of 
 questions. We will put up with many sad details, 
 if the soul of it were true. Details by themselves 
 will never teach us what it is. I believe we mis- 
 estimate Mahomet's faults even as faults: but the 
 secret of him will never be got by dwelling there. 
 We will leave all this behind us; and assuring our- 
 selves that he did mean some true thing, ask can- 
 didly, what it was or might be. 
 
 These Arabs Mahomet was born among are cer- 
 tainly a notable people. Their country itself is nota- 
 ble; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage inac- 
 cessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, alter- 
 
LECT, II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 61 
 
 nating with beautiful strips of verdure: wherever 
 water is, there is greenness, beauty; odoriferous 
 balm-shrubs, date-trees, frankincense trees. Con- 
 sider that wide waste horizon of sand, empty, 
 silent, like a sand-sea, dividing habitable place 
 from habitable. You are all alone there, left alone 
 with the Universe; by day a fierce sun blazing 
 down on it with intolerable radiance : by night 
 the great deep Heaven with its stars. Such a coun- 
 try is fit for a swift-handed, deep-hearted race of men. 
 There is something most agile, active, and yet most 
 meditative, enthusiastic in the Arab character. The 
 Persians are called the French of the East; we will 
 call the Arabs Oriental Italians. A gifted noble peo- 
 ple: a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron 
 restraint over them: the characteristic of noble-mind- 
 edness, of genius. The wild Bedouin welcomes the 
 stranger to his tent, as one having right to all that is 
 there; were it his worst enemy, he will slay his foal 
 to treat him, will serve him with sacred hospitality 
 for three days, will set him fairly on his way; — and 
 then, by another law as sacred, kill him if he can. 
 In words too, as in action. They are not a loqua- 
 cious people, taciturn rather; but eloquent, gifted 
 when they do speak. An earnest, truthful kind of 
 men. They are, as we know, of Jewish kindred: 
 but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews 
 they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, 
 which is not Jewish. They had " Poetic contests " 
 among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale says, 
 at Ocadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly 
 fairs, and there, when the merchandising was done, 
 Poets sang for prizes: — the wild people gathered to 
 hear that. 
 
62 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest; the out- 
 come of many or of all high qualities: what we may 
 call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous 
 worshippers according to their light. They worship- 
 ped the stars, as Sabeans; worshipped many natural 
 objects, — recognised them as symbols, immediate 
 manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was 
 wrong; and yet not wholly wrong. All God's works 
 are still in a sense symbols of God. Do we not, as I 
 urged, still account a merit to recognise a certain 
 inexhaustible significance, "poetic beauty," as we 
 name it, in all natural objects whatsoever? A man 
 is a poet, and honoured, for doing that, and speak- 
 ing or singing it, — a kind of diluted worship. They 
 had many prophets, these Arabs; Teachers each to 
 his tribe, each according to the light he had. But 
 indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, 
 still palpable to every one of us, of what devoutness 
 and noble-mindedness had dwelt in these rustic 
 thoughtful people? Biblical critics seem agreed 
 that our own Book of Job was written in that region 
 of the world. I call that, apart from all theories 
 about it, one of the grandest things ever written with 
 pen. One feels, indeed, as if it were not Hebrew; 
 such a noble universality, different from noble pa- 
 triotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. A noble Book; 
 all men's Book! It is our first, oldest statement of the 
 never-ending Problem, — man's destiny and God's 
 ways with him here in this earth. And all in such free 
 flowing outlines; grand in its sincerity, in its simplicity; 
 in its epic melody, and repose of reconcilement. There 
 is the seeing eye, the mildly understanding heart. 
 So true, every way; true eyesight and vision for all 
 things; material things no less than spiritual: the 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 63 
 
 Horse, — "hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?" 
 —he " laughs at the shaking of the spear!'' Such 
 living likenesses were never since drawn. Sublime 
 sorrow, sublime reconciliation; oldest choral melody 
 as of the heart of mankind; — so soft and great; as 
 the summer midnight, as the world with its seas and 
 stars! There is nothing written, I think, in the Bi- 
 ble or out of it, of equal literary merit. — 
 
 To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient 
 universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, 
 still kept in the building called Caabah, at Mecca. 
 Diodorus Siculus mentions this Caabah in a way not 
 to be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temple 
 in his time; that is, some half-century before our 
 Era. Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood 
 that the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, 
 some man might see it fall out of Heaven! It stands 
 now beside the Well Zemzem; the Caabah is built 
 over both. A well is in all places a beautiful affect- 
 ing object, gushing out like life from the hard earth; 
 — still more so in these hot dry countries, where it is 
 the first condition of being. The well Zemzem has 
 its name from the bubbling sound of the waters, zem- 
 zem; they think it is the Well which Hagar found 
 with her little Ishmael in the wilderness: the aero- 
 lite and it have been sacred now, and had a Caabah 
 over them, for thousands of years. A curious object 
 that Caabah! There it stands at this hour, in the 
 black cloth-covering the Sultan sends it yearly; 
 "twenty-seven cubits high;" with circuit, with double 
 circuit of pillars, with festoon-rows of lamps and 
 quaint ornaments: the lamps will be lighted again 
 this night, — to glitter again under the stars. An au- 
 thentic fragment of the oldest Past. It is the Keblah 
 
64 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 of all Moslems; from Delhi all onwards to Morocco, 
 the eyes of innumerable praying men are turned to- 
 wards it, five times, this day and all days: one of the 
 nolablest centres in the Habitation of Men. 
 
 It had been from the sacredness attached to this 
 Caabah Stone and Hagar's Well, from the pilgrim- 
 ings of all tribes of Arabs thither, that Mecca took 
 its rise as a Town. A great town once, though much 
 decayed now. It has no natural advantage for a 
 town; stands in a sandy hollow amid bare barren 
 hills at a distance from the sea: its provisions, its 
 very bread, have to be imported. But so many pil- 
 grims needed lodgings; and then all places of pil- 
 grimage do, from the first, become places of trade. 
 The first day pilgrims meet, merchants have also 
 met: where men see themselves assembled for one 
 object, they find that they can accomplish other ob- 
 jects which depend on meeting together, Mecca be- 
 came the Fair of all Arabia. And thereby indeed 
 the chief staple and warehouse of whatever Com- 
 merce there was between the Indian and the West- 
 ern countries, Syria, Egypt, even Italy. It had at 
 one time a population of 100,000; buyers, forward- 
 ers of those Eastern and Western products; import- 
 ers for their own behoof of provisions and corn. The 
 government was a kind of irregular aristocratic re- 
 public, not without a touch of theocracy. Ten men 
 of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, were Go- 
 vernors of Mecca, and Keepers of the Caabah. The 
 Koreish were the chief tribe in Mahomet's time; his 
 own family was of that tribe. The rest of the Na- 
 tion, fractioned and cut asunder by deserts, lived 
 under similar rude patriarchal governments by one 
 or several: herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 65 
 
 robbers too; being oftenest at war, one with another, 
 or with all; held together by no open bond, if it were 
 not this meeting at the Caabah, where all forms of 
 Arab Idolatry assembled in common adoration; — held 
 mainly by the inward indissoluble bond of a common 
 blood and language. In this way had the Arabs lived 
 for long ageB, unnoticed by the world; a people of 
 great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day 
 when they should become notable to all the world. 
 Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering 
 state; much was getting into confusion and fermen- 
 tation among them. Obscure tidings of the most im- 
 portant Event ever transacted in this world, the Life 
 and Death of the Divine Man in Judea, at once the 
 symptom and cause of immeasurable change to all 
 people in the world, had in the course of centuries 
 reached into Arabia too; and could not but, of itself, 
 have produced fermentation there. 
 
 It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, 
 in the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet 
 was born. He was of the family of Hashem, of the 
 Koreish tribe as we said; though poor, connected 
 with the chief persons of his country. Almost at his 
 birth he lost his Father: at the age of six years his 
 Mother too, a woman noted for her beauty, her worth 
 and sense; he fell to the charge of his Grandfather, 
 an old man, a hundred years old. A good old man: 
 Mahomet's Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest 
 favourite son. He saw in Mahomet, with his old 
 life-worn eyes, a century old, the lost Abdallah come 
 back again, all that was left of Abdallah. He loved 
 the little orphan Boy greatly; used to say, They 
 must take care of that beautiful little Boy, nothing 
 6 
 
6G THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 in their kindred was more precious than he. At his 
 death, while the boy was still but two years old, he 
 left him in charge to Abu Thaleb the eldest of the 
 Uncles, as to him that now was head of the house. 
 By this Uncle, a just and rational man as every 
 thing betokens, Mahomet was brought up in 'the 
 best Arab way. 
 
 Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle 
 on trading journeys and such like; in his eighteenth 
 year one finds him a fighter following his Uncle in 
 war. But perhaps the most significant of all his jour- 
 neys is one we find noted as of some years earlier 
 date: a journey to the Fairs of Syria. The young 
 man here first came in contact with a quite foreign 
 world, — with one foreign element of endless moment 
 to him: the Christian Religion. I know not what 
 to make of that u Sergius, the Nestorian Monk," whom 
 Abu Thaleb and he are said to have lodged with; or 
 how much any monk could have taught one still so 
 young. Probably enough, it is greatly exaggerated, 
 this of the Nestorian Monk. Mahomet was only four- 
 teen; had no language but his own: much in Syria 
 must have been a strange and unintelligible whirl- 
 pool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; 
 glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken 
 in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen 
 in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights 
 one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the 
 beginning of much to Mahomet. 
 
 One other circumstance we must not forget: that 
 he had no school-learning; of the thing we call 
 school-learning none at all. The art of writing was 
 but just introduced into Arabia; it seems to be the 
 true opinion that Mahomet never could write! Life 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 67 
 
 in the Desert, with its experiences, was all his edu- 
 cation. What of this infinite Universe he, from his 
 dim place, with his own eyes and thoughts, could 
 take in, so much and no more of it was he to know. 
 Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no 
 bobks. Except by what he could see for himself, or 
 hear of by uncertain rumour of speech in the obscure 
 Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wis- 
 dom that had been before him or at a distance from 
 him in the world, was in a manner as good as not 
 there for him. Of the great brother souls, flame-bea- 
 cons through so many lands and times, no one di- 
 rectly communicates with this great soul. He is 
 alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilder- 
 ness; has to grow up so, — alone with Nature and his 
 own Thoughts. 
 
 But, from an early age, he had been remarked as 
 a thoughtful man. His companions named him 
 " M Jlmin, The Faithful.'' A man of truth and fide- 
 lity; true in what he did, in what he spake and 
 thought. They noted that he always meant some- 
 thing. A man rather taciturn in speech; silent when 
 there was nothing to be said; but pertinent, wise 
 sincere, when he did speak; always throwing light 
 on the matter. This is the only sort of speech worth 
 speaking! Through life we find him to have been 
 regarded as an altogether solid, brotherly, genuine 
 man. A serious, sincere character; yet amiable, 
 cordial, companionable, jocose even, — a good laugh 
 in him withal: there are men whose laugh is as un- 
 true as any thing about them; who cannot laugh. 
 One hears of Mahomet's beauty: his fine sagacious 
 honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black 
 eyes; — I somehow like too that vein on the brow, 
 
6S THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 which swelled up black, when he was in anger: like 
 the " horse-shoevem" in Scott's Redgauntlet. It was 
 a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black 
 swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it promi- 
 nent, as would appear. A spontaneous, passionate, 
 yet just, true meaning man! Full of wild faculty, 
 fire and light; of wild worth, all uncultured; work- 
 ing out his life-task in the depths of the Desert there. 
 How he was placed with Cadijah, a rich Widow, 
 as her Steward, and travelled in her business to the 
 Fairs of Syria; how he managed all, as one can well 
 understand, with fidelity, adroitness; how her grati- 
 tude, her regard for him grew: the story of their mar- 
 riage is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as told 
 us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five; she 
 forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived 
 in a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way 
 with this wedded benefactress; loving her truly, and 
 her alone. It goes greatly against the impostor-theo- 
 ry, the fact that he lived in this entirely unexcep- 
 tionable, entirely quiet and commonplace way, till 
 the heat of his years was done. He was forty before 
 he talked of any mission from Heaven. All his 
 irregularities, real and supposed, date from after his 
 fiftieth year, when the good Kadijah died. All his 
 " ambition," seemingly, had been, hitherto, to live an 
 honest life; his "fame," the mere good opinion of 
 neighbours that knew him, had been sufficient 
 hitherto. Not till he was already getting old, the 
 prurient heat of his life all burnt out, and peace grow- 
 ing to be the chief thing this world could give him, 
 did he start on the " career of ambition;" and, bely- 
 ing all his past character and existence, set up as a 
 wretched empty charlatan to acquire what he could 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 69 
 
 now no longer enjoy! For my share, I have no faith 
 whatever in that. 
 
 Ah no: this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, 
 with his beaming black eyes, and open social deep 
 soul, had other thoughts in him than ambition. A 
 silent great soul; he was one of those who cannot 
 but be in earnest; whom Nature herself has appoint- 
 ed to be sincere. While others walk in formulas and 
 hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man 
 could not screen himself in formulas; he was alone 
 with his own soul and the reality of things. The 
 great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared in upon 
 him; with its terrors, with its splendours; no hear- 
 says could hide that unspeakable fact, "Here am I!" 
 Such sincerity ', as we named it, has in very truth some- 
 thing of divine. The word of such a man is a Voice 
 direct from Nature's own heart. Men do and must 
 listen to that as to nothing else; — all else is wind in 
 comparison. From of old, a thousand thoughts, in 
 his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: 
 What am I? What is, this unfathomable Thing I live 
 in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what 
 is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to 
 do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Si- 
 nai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The 
 great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue- 
 glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. 
 The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration 
 dwelt there, had to answer! 
 
 It is the thing which all men have to ask them- 
 selves; which we too have to ask, and answer. This 
 wild man felt it to be of infinite moment; all other 
 things of no moment whatever in comparison. The 
 jargon of argumentative Greek Sects, vague tradL- 
 6* 
 
70 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 tions of Jews, the stupid routine of Arab Idolatry: 
 there was no answer to these. A Hero, as I repeat, 
 has this first distinction, which indeed we may call 
 first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole 
 Heroism, That he looks through the shows of things 
 into things. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, re- 
 spectable formula: all this is good, or is not good. 
 There is something behind and beyond all these, 
 which all these must correspond with, be the image 
 of, or they are — Idolatries; " bits of black wood pre- 
 tending to be God;" to the earnest soul a mockery 
 and abomination. Idolatries never so gilded, waited 
 on by heads of the Koreish, will do nothing for this 
 man. Though all men walk by them, what good is 
 it? The great Reality stands glaring there upon Aim. 
 He there has to answer it, or perish miserably. Now ? 
 even now, or else through all Eternity never! An- 
 swer it; thou must find an answer. — Ambition ? What 
 could all Arabia do for this man; with the crown of 
 Greek Heraclius, of Persian Chosroes, and all crowns 
 in the Earth; — what could they all do for him! It 
 was not of the Earth he wanted to hear tell; it was 
 of the Heaven above, and of the Hell beneath. All 
 crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, where would 
 they in a few brief years be ? To be Sheik of Mecca 
 or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt wood put into your 
 hand, — will that be one's salvation ? I decidedly 
 think not. We will leave it altogether, this impos- 
 tor-hypothesis, as not credible; not very tolerable 
 even, worthy chiefly of dismissal by us. 
 
 Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during 
 the month Ramadhan, into solitude and silence; as 
 indeed was the Arab custom; a praiseworthy custom, 
 which such a man, above all, would find natural and 
 
LECT. IT. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 71 
 
 useful. Communing with his own heart, in the si- 
 lence of the mountains; himself silent; open to the 
 "small still voices;" it was a right natural custom! 
 Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when having 
 withdrawn to a cavern in Mount Hara, near Mecca, 
 during this Ramadhan, to pass the month in prayer, 
 and meditation on those great questions, he one day 
 told his wife Kadijah, who with his household was 
 with him or near him this year, That by the unspeak- 
 able special favour of Heaven he had now found it 
 all out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but 
 saw it all. That all these Idols and Formulas were 
 nothing, miserable bits of wood; that there was One 
 God in and over all; and we must leave all Idols, 
 and look to Him. That God is great; and that there 
 is nothing else great! He is the reality. Wooden 
 Idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, 
 sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow 
 of Him; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal 
 Splendour. "Jlllah akbar, God is great;" — and then 
 also "Islam" That we must submit to God. That our 
 whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, 
 whatsoever He do to us. For this world, and for the 
 other! The thing He sends to us, were it death and 
 worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we 
 resign ourselves to God. — "If this be Islam," says 
 Goethe, "do we not all live in Islam?" Yes, all of 
 us that have any moral life; we all live so. It has 
 ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not 
 merely to submit to Necessity, — Necessity will make 
 him submit,-<-but to know and believe well that the 
 stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the 
 wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease 
 his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's^ 
 
72 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 World in his small fraction of a brainjto know that 
 it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a 
 Just Law, that the soul of it was Good; — that his part 
 in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in 
 devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obey- 
 ing it as unquestionable. 
 
 I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A 
 man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road 
 towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins him- 
 self to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of 
 all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit- 
 and-loss calculations: he is victorious while he co- 
 operates with that great eentral Law, not victorious 
 otherwise: — and surely his first chance of co-opera- 
 ting with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know 
 with his whole soul that it is; that it is good, and 
 alone good! This is the soul of Islam; it is properly 
 the soul of Christianity, — for Islam is definable as a 
 confused form of Christianity; had Christianity not 
 been, neither had it been. Christianity also com- 
 mands us, before all, to be resigned to God. We 
 are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give ear 
 to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes: to know 
 that we know nothing; that the worst and cruellest 
 to our eyes is not what it seems; that we have to re- 
 ceive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, 
 and say, It is good and wise, God is great! "Though 
 He slay me, yet will I trust in him." Islam means 
 in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This 
 is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed 
 to our Earth. 
 
 Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the 
 darkness of this wild Arab Soul. A confused dazzling 
 splendour as of life and Heaven, in the great dark' 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. to 
 
 ness which threatened to be death: he called it reve- 
 lation and the angel Gabriel; — who of us yet can 
 know what to call it? It is the " Inspiration of the 
 Almighty' 7 that giveth us understanding. To know; 
 to get into the truth of any thing, is ever a mystic 
 act, — but which the best Logics can but babble on 
 the surface. " Is not Belief the true god-announcing 
 Miracle?" says Novalis. — That Mahomet's whole 
 soul, set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed 
 him, should feel as if it were important and the only 
 important thing, was very natural. That Providence 
 had unspeakably honoured him by revealing it, saving 
 him from death and darkness; that he therefore was 
 bound to make known the same to all creatures; this 
 is what is meant by "Mahomet is the Prophet of God;" 
 this too is not without its true meaning. — 
 
 The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him 
 with wonder, with doubt ; at length she answered, 
 Yes, it was true this that he said. One can fancy too 
 the boundless gratitude of Mahomet; and how of all 
 the kindnesses she had done, this of believing the 
 earnest struggling word he now spoke was the great- 
 est. "It is certain," says Novalis, "my conviction 
 gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe 
 in it." It is a boundless favour. — He never forgot this 
 good Kadijah. Long afterwards, Ayesha his young 
 favourite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished 
 herself among the Moslem, by all manner of quali- 
 ties, through her whole long life; this young brilliant 
 Ayesha was, one day, questioning him: "Now am 
 not I better than Kadijah? She was a widoAv; old, 
 and had lost her looks: you love me better than you 
 did her?" — "No, by Allah!" answered Mahomet: 
 "No, by Allah! She believed in me when none else 
 
74 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 would believe. In the whole world I had but one 
 friend, and she was that!" Seid, his Slave, also 
 believed in him; these with his young Cousin Ali^ 
 Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts. 
 
 He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that; but 
 the most treated it with ridicule, with indifference: 
 in three years, I think, he had gained but thirteen 
 followers. His progress was slow enough. His en- 
 couragement to go on, was altogether the usual 
 encouragement that such a man in such a case meets. 
 After some three years of small success, he invited 
 forty of his chief kindred to an entertainment; and 
 there stood up and told what his pretension was: that 
 he had this thing to promulgate abroad to all men; 
 that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which 
 of them would second him in that? Amid the doubt 
 and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, 
 impatient of the silence, started \ip, and exclaimed 
 in passionate fierce language, That he would ! The 
 assembly, among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Fa- 
 ther, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet; yet the 
 sight there, of one unlettered elderly man, with a lad 
 of sixteen, deciding on such an enterprise against all 
 mankind, appeared ridiculous to them; the assembly 
 broke up in laughter. Nevertheless it proved not a 
 laughable thing; it was a very serious thing! As for 
 this young Ali, one cannot but like him. A noble- 
 minded creature, as he shows himself, now and 
 always afterwards; full of affection, of fiery daring. 
 Something chivalrous in him; brave as a lion; yet 
 with a grace, a truth and affection worthy of Chris- 
 tian Knighthood. He died by assassination in the 
 Mosque at Bagdad; a death occasioned by his own ge- 
 nerous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others; 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 75 
 
 he said, If the wound proved not unto death, they 
 must pardon the Assassin; but if it did, then they 
 must slay him straightway, that so they two in the 
 same hour might appear before God, and see which 
 side of that quarrel was the just one! 
 
 Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, 
 Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. 
 One or two men of influence had joined him; the 
 thing spread slowly, but it was spreading. Naturally 
 he gave offence to every body: Who is this that pre- 
 tends to be wiser than we all; that rebukes us all, 
 as mere fools and worshippers of wood? Abu Thaleb 
 the good Uncle spoke with him; Could he not be 
 silent about all that; believe it all for himself, and 
 not trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger 
 himself and them all, talking of it? Mahomet an- 
 swered: if the Sun stood on his right hand and the 
 Moon on his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he 
 could not obey! No: there was something in this 
 Truth he had got which was of Nature herself; equal 
 in rank to Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature 
 had made. It would speak itself there, so long as 
 the Almighty allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, 
 and all Koreish and all men and things. It must do 
 that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered so, 
 and, they say, " burst into tears. 9 \ Burst into tears: 
 he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him ; that the task 
 he had got was no soft, but a stern and great one. 
 
 He went on speaking to who would listen to him; 
 publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they 
 came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this place and 
 that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret 
 danger attended him. His powerful relations pro- 
 tected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on his own 
 
76 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek 
 refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew 
 ever angrier; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, 
 to put Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu 
 Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Ma- 
 homet is not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his 
 outlook at this time was one of the dismallest. He 
 had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly hither 
 and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. 
 More than once it seemed all over with him; more 
 than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse 
 taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his 
 Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of 
 at all. But it was not to end so. 
 
 In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his 
 enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, 
 one out of every tribe waiting to take his life, and no 
 continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer, 
 Mahomet fled to the place then called Yathreb, where 
 he had gained some adherents; the place they now 
 call Medina, or " Medinat al Nabi, the City of the 
 Prophet," from that circumstance. It lay some 200 
 miles off, through rocks and deserts; not without great 
 difficulty, in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped 
 thither, and found welcome. The whole East dates 
 its era from this Flight, Hegira as they name it: the 
 Year 1 of this Hegira is 622 of our era, the fifty-third 
 of Mahomet's life. He was now becoming an old 
 man; his friends sinking round him one by one: his 
 path desolate, encompassed with danger: unless he 
 could find hope in his own heart, the outward face 
 of things was but hopeless for him. It is so with all 
 men in the like case. Hitherto Mahomet had pro- 
 fessed to publish his Religion by the way of preach- 
 
LECT. H. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 77 
 
 ing and persuasion alone. But now, driven foully 
 out of his native country, since unjust men had not 
 only given no ear to his earnest Heaven's-message, 
 the deep cry of his heart, but would not even let him 
 live if he kept speaking it, — the wild Son of the 
 Desert resolved to defend himself, like a man and 
 Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have 
 it. Tidings, felt to be of infinite moment to them and 
 all men, they would not listen to these; would tram- 
 ple them down by sheer violence, steel and murder: 
 well, let steel try it then! Ten years more this 
 Mahomet had; all of fighting, of breathless impetu- 
 ous toil and struggle; with what result we know. 
 
 Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his 
 Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what 
 we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it 
 propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching 
 and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an 
 argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there 
 is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but 
 where will you get your sword? Every new opinion, 
 at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In 
 one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One 
 man alone of the whole world believes it; there is 
 one man against all men. That he take a sword, and 
 try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You 
 must first get your sword .' On the whole, a thing will 
 propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the 
 Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the 
 sword, when once it had got one. Charlemagne's 
 conversion of the Saxons was not by preaching. I 
 care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to 
 struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or 
 tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We 
 7 
 
78 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight and 
 to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, 
 whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long- 
 run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be 
 conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put 
 away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, 
 Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the 
 thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we 
 call t? , uest, that thing and not the other will be found 
 growing at last. 
 
 Here, however, in reference to much that there is 
 in Mahomet and his success, we are to remember 
 what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, com- 
 posure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You 
 take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your 
 wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, 
 barn-sweepings, dust, and all imaginable rubbish; 
 no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she 
 grows the wheat, — the whole rubbish she silently 
 absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. 
 The yellow wheat is growing there: the good Earth 
 is silent about all the rest, — has silently turned all 
 the rest, to some benefit too, and makes no complaint 
 about it! So every where in Nature. She is true and 
 not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and mother!} 7 , 
 in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be 
 genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not 
 if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things 
 she ever gave harbour to. Alas, is not this the his- 
 tory of all highest Truth that comes or ever came 
 into the world? The body of them all is imperfec- 
 tion, an element of light in darkness: to us they have 
 to come imbodied in mere Logic, in some merely 
 scientific Theorem of the Universe; which cannot be 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 79 
 
 complete; which cannot but be found, one day, in- 
 complete, erroneous, and so die and disappear. The 
 body of all Truth dies; and yet in all, I say, there 
 is a soul which never dies; which in new and ever- 
 nobler imbodiment lives immortal as man himself! 
 It is the way with Nature. The genuine essence of 
 Truth never dies. That it be genuine, a voice from 
 the great Deep of Nature, there is the point at Na- 
 ture's judgment-seat. What we call pure or impure, 
 is not with her the final question. Not how much 
 chaff is in you; but whether, you have any wheat. 
 Pure,? I might say to many a man: Yes, you are 
 pure; pure enough; but you are chaff, — insincere 
 hypothesis, hearsay, formality; you never were in 
 contact with the great heart of the Universe at all; 
 you are properly neither pure nor impure; you are 
 nothing, Nature has no business with you. 
 
 Mahomet's Creed we called a kind of Christianity, 
 and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness 
 with which it was believed and laid to heart, I should 
 say a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian 
 Sects, with their vain janglings about Homoiousion 
 and Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the 
 heart empty and dead! The truth of it is imbedded 
 in portentous error and falsehood; but the truth of it 
 makes it be believed, not the falsehood: it succeeded 
 by its truth. A bastard kind of Christianity, but a 
 living kind; with a heart-life in it; not dead, chop- 
 ping barren logic merely ! Out of all that rubbish of 
 Arab idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, 
 subtleties, rumours and hypotheses of Greeks and 
 Jews, with their idle wire-drawings, this wild man of 
 the Desert, with his wild sincere heart, earnest as 
 death and life, with his great flashing natural eye- 
 
80 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 sight, had seen into the kernel of the matter. Idolatry 
 is nothing: these Wooden Idols of yours, "ye rub 
 them with oil and wax, and the flies stick on them," — 
 these are wood, I tell you! They can do nothing for 
 you; they are an impotent blasphemous pretence; a 
 horror and abomination, if ye knew them. God alone 
 is; God alone has power; He made us, He can kill 
 us and keep us alive : "Allah akbar, God is great." 
 Understand that His will is the best for you; that 
 howsoever sore to flesh and blood, you will find it the 
 wisest, best: you are bound to take it so; in this world 
 and in the next, you have no other thing that you can 
 do! — And now if the wild idolatrous men did believe 
 this, and with their fiery hearts lay hold of it to do 
 it, in what form soever it came to them, I say it was 
 well worthy of being believed. In one form or the 
 other, I say it is still the one thing worthy of being 
 believed by all men. Man does hereby become the 
 high-priest of this Temple of a World. He is in har- 
 mony with the Decrees of the Author of this World; 
 co-operating with them, not vainly withstanding 
 them: I know, to this day, no better definition of 
 Duty tban that same. All that is right includes itself 
 in this of co-operating with the real Tendency of the 
 World: you succeed by this, (the World's Tendency 
 will succeed,) you are good, and in the right course 
 there. Hojnoiovsion^Homooiision, vain logical jangle 
 then or before or at any time, may jangle itself out, 
 and go whither and how it likes: this is the thing it 
 all struggles to mean, if it would mean any thing. 
 If it do not succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. 
 Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be cor- 
 rectly worded or incorrectly; but that living concrete 
 Sons of Adam do lay this to heart: that is the im- 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 81 
 
 portant point. Islam devoured all these vain jang- 
 ling Sects; and I think had right to do so. It was a 
 Reality direct from the great Heart of Nature once 
 more. Arab idolatries, Syrian formulas, whatsoever 
 was not equally real, had to go up in flame, — mere 
 dead fuel, in various senses, for this which was fire. 
 
 It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, 
 especially after the Flight to Mecca, that Mahomet 
 dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they 
 name Koran, or reading, " Thing to be read." This 
 is the Work he and his disciples made so much of, 
 asking all the world, Is not that a miracle? The 
 Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence 
 which few Christians pay even to their Bible. It Is 
 admitted every where as the standard of all law and 
 all practice ; the thing to be gone upon in specula- 
 tion and life: the message sent direct out of Heaven, 
 which this Earth has to conform to, and walk by; the 
 thing to be read. Their Judges decide by it; all 
 Moslem are bound to study it, seek in it for the light 
 of their life. They have mosques where it is all read 
 daily; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, 
 get through the whole each day. There, for twelve 
 hundred years, has the voice of this Book, at all mo- 
 ments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts 
 of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doctors 
 that had read it seventy thousand times! 
 
 Very curious; if one sought for " discrepancies of 
 national taste," here surely were the most eminent 
 instance of that! We also can read the Koran; our 
 Translation of it, by Sale, is known to be a very fair 
 one. I must say, it is as toilsome reading as I ever 
 undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude, 
 7* 
 
82 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 incondite; endless iterations, long-windedness, en- 
 tanglement; most crude, incondite; — insupportable 
 stupidity, in short ! Nothing but a sense of duty could 
 carry any European through the Koran. We read in 
 it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable 
 masses of lumber, that perhaps we may get some 
 glimpses of a remarkable man. It is true we have 
 it under disadvantages: the Arabs see more method 
 in it than we. Mahomet's followers found the Koran 
 lying all in fractions, as it had been written down at 
 first promulgation; much of it, they say, on shoulder- 
 blades of mutton, flung pellmell into a chest: and 
 they published it without any discoverable order as 
 to time or otherwise; — merely trying, as would seem, 
 and this not very strictly, to put the longest chapters 
 first. The real beginning of it, in that way, lies 
 almost at the end ; for the earliest portions were the 
 shortest. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps 
 would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is 
 rhythmatic; a kind of wild chanting song, in the 
 original. Yet with every allowance, one feels it dif- 
 ficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this 
 Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the 
 Earth ; as a well written book, or indeed as a book 
 at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; written, so 
 far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever 
 was! So much for national discrepancies, and the 
 standard of taste. 
 
 Yet 1 should say, it was not unintelligible how the 
 Arabs might so love it. When once you get this con- 
 fused coil of a Koran fairly off your hands, and have 
 it behind you at a distance, the essential type of it 
 begins to disclose itself; and in this there is a merit 
 quite other than the literary one. If a book come 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 83 
 
 from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; 
 all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. 
 One would say the primary character of the Koran is 
 this of its genuineness, of its being a bond fide book. 
 Prideaux, I know, and others have represented it as 
 a mere bundle of juggleries; chapter after chapter 
 got up to excuse and varnish over the author's suc- 
 cessive sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries: 
 but really it is time to dismiss all that. 1 do not assert 
 Mahomet's continual sincerity: who is continually 
 sincere? But I confess I can make nothing of the "fr 
 critic, in these times, who would accuse him of deceit 
 prepense; of conscious deceit generally, or perhaps 
 at all; — still more, of living in a mere element of 
 conscious deceit, and writing this Koran as a forger 
 and juggler would have done! Every candid eye, I 
 think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. It 
 is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; 
 rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, 
 earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in 
 words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives 
 to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pell- 
 mell; for very multitude of things to say he can get 
 nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes 
 itself into no form of composition, is stated in no se- 
 quence, method, or coherence; — they are not shaped 
 at all, these thoughts of his; flung out unshaped, as 
 they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inar- 
 ticulate state. We said "stupid :" yet natural stupidity 
 is by no means the character of Mahomet's Book; it 
 is natural uncultivation rather. The man has not 
 studied speaking ; in the haste and pressure of con- 
 tinual fighting, has not time to mature himself into 
 fit speech. The panting breathless haste and vehe- 
 
84 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 mence of a man struggling in the thick battle for life 
 and salvation; this is the mood he is in! A head- 
 long haste; for very magnitude of meaning he cannot 
 get himself articulated into words. The successive 
 utterances of a soul in that mood, coloured by the 
 various vicissitudes of three-and-twenty years; now 
 well uttered, now worse : this is the Koran. 
 
 For we are to consider Mahomet, through these 
 three-and-twenty years, as the centre of a world 
 wholly in conflict. Battles with the Koreish and 
 Heathen quarrels among his own people, backslid- 
 ings of his own wild heart; all this kept him in a 
 perpetual whirl, his soul knowing rest no more. In 
 wakeful nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of 
 the man, tossing amid these vortices, would hail any 
 light of a decision for them as a veritable light from 
 Heaven; any making up of his mind, so blessed, in- 
 dispensable for him there, would seem the inspira- 
 tion of a Gabriel. Forger and juggler! Ah, no! 
 This great fiery heart, seething, simmering like a 
 great furnace of thoughts, was not a juggler's. His 
 Life was a Fact to him; this God's Universe an awful 
 Fact and Reality. He has faults enough. The man 
 was an uncultured semi-barbarous Son of Nature, 
 much of the Bedouin still clinging to him: we must 
 take him for that. But for a wretched Simulacrum, 
 a hungry Impostor without eyes or heart, practising 
 for a mess of pottage such blasphemous swindlery, 
 forgery of celestial documents, continual high-trea- 
 son against his Maker and Self, we will not and 
 cannot take him. 
 
 Sincerity, in all senses, seems to be the merit of 
 the Koran; what had rendered it precious to the wild 
 Arab men. It is, after all, the first and last merit in 
 
LECT. IT. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 85 
 
 a book ; gives rise to merits of all kinds, — nay, at 
 bottom, it alone can give rise to merit of any kind. 
 Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradi- 
 tion, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Ko- 
 ran a vein of true direct insight, of what we might 
 almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body 
 of the Book is made up of mere tradition, and as it 
 were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. 
 He returns for ever to the old stories of the Prophets 
 as they went current in the Arab memory ; how Pro- 
 phet after Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Pro- 
 phet Hud, the Prophet Moses, Christian and other 
 real and fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe 
 and to that, warning men of their sin; and been re- 
 ceived by them even as he Mahomet was, — which is 
 a great solace to him. 
 
 These things he repeats ten, perhaps twenty times; 
 again and ever again, with wearisome iteration; has 
 never done repeating them. A brave Samuel John- 
 son, in his forlorn garret, might study the Biogra- 
 phies of authors in that way ! This is the great sta- 
 ple of the Koran. But curiously, through all this, 
 comes ever and anon some glance as of the real 
 thinker and seer. He has actually an eye for the 
 world, this Mahomet: with a certain directness and 
 rugged vigour, he brings home still, to our heart, the 
 thing his own heart has been open to. I make but 
 little of his praises of Allah, which many praise; 
 they are borrowed I suppose from the Hebrew, at 
 least they are far surpassed there. But the eye that 
 flashes direct into the heart of things, and sees the 
 truth of them ! this is to me a highly interesting ob- 
 ject. Great Nature's own gift ; which she bestows 
 on all; but which only one in the thousand does not 
 
86 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 cast sorrowfully away: it is what I call sincerity of 
 vision; the test of a sincere heart. Mahomet can 
 work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: 1 
 can work no miracles. I ? " I am a public preacher;" 
 appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. 
 Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old 
 been all one great miracle to him. Look over the 
 world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah ; 
 wholly " a sign to you," if your eyes were open! This 
 Earth, God made it for you; " appointed paths in it;" 
 you can live in it, go to and fro on it. — The clouds 
 in the dry country of Arabia, to Mahomet they were 
 very wonderful; Great clouds, he says, born in the 
 deep bosom of the Upper Immensity, where do they 
 come from ? They hang there, the great black mon- 
 sters; pour down their rain-deluges " to revive a dead 
 earth," and grass springs, and " tall leafy palm-trees 
 with their date-clusters hanging around. Is not that 
 a sign ? Your cattle too, — Allah made them : ser- 
 viceable dumb creatures; they make the grass into 
 milk; you have your clothing from them, very strange 
 creatures; "and," adds he, "and they are a credit to 
 you!" Ships, — he talks often about ships: Huge 
 moving mountains, they spread out their cloth wings, 
 go bounding through the water there, Heaven's wind 
 driving them; anon they lie motionless, God has 
 withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir ! 
 Miracles cries he ; What miracles would you hav&? 
 Are not you yourselves there? God made you, 
 " shaped you out of a little clay." Ye were small 
 once : a few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have 
 beauty, strength, thoughts, "ye have compassion on 
 one another." Old age comes on you, and gray hairs; 
 your strength fades into feebleness; ye sink down, 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 87 
 
 and again are not. "Ye have compassion on one 
 another: this struck me much: Allah might have 
 made you having no compassion on one another, — 
 how had it been then V 9 This is a great direct thought, 
 a glance at first-hand into the very fact of things. 
 Rude vestiges of poetic genius, of whatsoever is best 
 and truest are visible in this man. A strong, untu- 
 tored intellect; eyesight, heart : a strong wild man 
 — might have shaped himself into Poet, King, Priest, 
 any kind of Hero. 
 
 To his eyes it is for ever clear that this world wholly 
 is miraculous. He sees what, as we said once be- 
 fore all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians them- 
 selves, in one way or other, have contrived to see; 
 That this so solid-looking material world is, at bot- 
 tom, in very deed, Nothing; is a visual and actual 
 Manifestation of God's power and presence, — a sha- 
 dow hung out by Him on the bosom of the void Infi- 
 nite; nothing more. The mountains, he says, these 
 great rock-mountains, they shall dissipate themselves 
 "like clouds;" melt into the Blue as clouds, do and 
 not be! He figures the Earth; in the Arab fashion. 
 Sale tells us, as an immense Plain or flat Plate of 
 ground, the mountains are set on that to steady it. 
 At the Last Day they shall disappear "like clouds ;" 
 the whole Earth shall go spinning, whirl itself off 
 into wreck, and as dust and vapour vanish in the 
 Inane. Allah withdraws his hand from it, and it 
 ceases to be. The universal empire of Allah, pre- 
 sence every where of an unspeakable Power, a Splen- 
 dour, and a Terror not to be named, as the true 
 force, essence and reality, in all things, whatsoever, 
 was continually clear to this man. What a modern 
 talks of by the name, Forces of Nature, Laws of Na- 
 
S3 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 ture; and does not figure as a divine thing; not even 
 as one thing at all, but as a set of things, undivine 
 enough, — saleable, curious, good for propelling 
 steam-ships! With our Sciences and Cyclopedias, 
 we are apt to forget the divineness, in those labora- 
 tories of ours. We ought not to forget it! That once 
 well forgotten, I know not what else were worth re- 
 membering. Most sciences, I think, were then a 
 very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty; — a 
 thistle in late autumn. The best science, without 
 this, is but as the dead timber; it is not the growing 
 tree and forest, — which gives ever-new timber among 
 other things! Man cannot know either, unless he 
 can worship in some way. His knowledge is a pe- 
 dantry, and dead thistle, otherwise. 
 
 Much has been said and written about the sensu- 
 ality of Mahomet's Religion; more than was just. 
 The indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, 
 were not of his appointment; he found them prac- 
 tised, unquestioned from immemorial time in Arabia; 
 what he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not 
 on one but on many sides. His Religion is not an 
 easy one; with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict com- 
 plex formulas, prayers five times a day, and absti- 
 nence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an 
 easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause 
 holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a 
 calumny on men to say that they are roused to he- 
 roic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, 
 — sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! 
 In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. 
 The poor swearing soldier, hired to be shot, has his 
 "honour of a soldier," different from drill-regulations 
 and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 89 
 
 but to do noble and true things, and vindicate him- 
 self under God's Heaven as a god-made Man, that 
 the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the 
 way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge kindles into 
 a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to 
 be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyr- 
 dom, death are the allurements that act on the heart 
 of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you 
 have a flame that burns up all lower considerations. 
 Not happiness, but something higher: one sees this 
 even in the frivolous classes, with their " point of 
 honour " and the like. Not by flattering our appe- 
 tites; no, by awakening the Heroic that slumbers in 
 every heart, can any Religion gain followers. 
 
 Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about 
 him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely 
 if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, 
 intent mainly on base enjoyments, — nay on enjoy- 
 ments of any kind. His household was of the fru- 
 galest; his common diet barley- bread and water: 
 sometimes for months there was not a fire once 
 lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride 
 that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own 
 cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man; care- 
 less of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I 
 should say; something better in him than hunger of 
 any sort, — or these wild Arab men, fighting and jost- 
 ling three-and-twenty years at his hand, in close 
 contact with him always, would not have reverenced 
 him so! They were wild men, bursting ever and 
 anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; 
 without right worth and manhood, no man could 
 have commanded them. They call him Prophet, 
 you say? Why, he stood there face to face with 
 S 
 
90 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 them; bare, not inshrined in any mystery; visibly 
 clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes : 
 fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them: 
 they must have seen what kind of man he was, let 
 him be called what you like! No emperor with his 
 tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own 
 clouting, — during three-and-twenty years of rough 
 actual trial. I find something of a veritable Hero 
 necessary for that, of itself. 
 
 His last words are a prayer; broken ejaculations 
 of a heart struggling up, in trembling hope, towards 
 its Maker. We cannot say that his religion made 
 him worse; it made him better; good, not bad. 
 Generous things are recorded of him: when he lost 
 his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own di- 
 alect, every way sincere, and yet equivalent to that 
 of Christians," The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh 
 away; blessed be the name of the Lord." He an- 
 swered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated, well- 
 beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid had 
 fallen in the War of Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's 
 fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said it was 
 well; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid had 
 now gone to his Master: it was all well with Seid. 
 Yet Seid's daughter found him weeping over the 
 body; — the old gray-haired man melting in tears! 
 "What do I see?" said she. — "You see a friend 
 weeping over his friend." — He went out for the last 
 time into the mosque, two days before his death, 
 asked if he had injured any man? Let his own 
 back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice 
 answered, "Yes, me three drachms," borrowed on 
 such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them to be paid: 
 "Better be in shame now," said he, " than at the day 
 
LECT. IT. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 91 
 
 of judgment." — You remember Kadijah, and the 
 "No, by Allah!" Traits of that kind show us the 
 genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible 
 through twelve centuries, — the veritable Son of our 
 common Mother. 
 
 Withal I like Mahomet for his total freedom from 
 cant. He is a rough self-helping son of the wilder- 
 ness; does not pretend to be what he is not. There 
 is no ostentatious pride in him; but neither does he 
 go much upon humility: he is there as he can be, in 
 cloak and shoes of his own clouting; speaks plainly 
 to all manner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, 
 what it is they are bound to do; knows well enough, 
 about himself, " the respect due unto thee." . 
 
 In a life-and-death war with Bedouins, cruel things 
 could not fail; but neither are acts of mercy, of no- 
 ble, natural pity and generosity, wanting. Mahomet 
 / makes no apology for the one, no boast of the other.) 
 They were each the free dictate of his heart: each 
 called for, there and then. Not a mealy-mouthed 
 man! A candid ferocity, if the case call for it, is in 
 him; he does not mince matters! The war of Tabuc 
 is a thing he often speaks of: his men refused, many 
 of them, to march on that occasion; pleaded the 
 heat of the weather, the harvest, and so forth; he 
 can never forget that. Your harvest? It lasts for a 
 day. What will become of your harvest through all 
 Eternity? Hot weather? Yes, it was hot; but " Hell 
 will be hotter!" Sometimes a rough sarcasm turns 
 up: He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall have the 
 just measure of your deeds at that Great Day. They 
 will be weighed out to you; ye shall not have short 
 weight! — Every where he fixes the matter in his eye; 
 he sees it: his heart, now and then, is as if struck 
 
92 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 dumb by the greatness of it. " Assuredly," he says: 
 that word in the Koran, is written down sometimes 
 as a sentence by itself: " Assuredly." 
 
 No Dilettantism in this Mahomet; it is a business 
 of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time and 
 Eternity; he is in deadly earnest about it! Dilettan- 
 tism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur- 
 search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth, 
 this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imagina- 
 ble sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the 
 man never having been open to Truth; — "living in 
 a vain show." Such a man not only utters and pro- 
 duces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood.* The 
 rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is 
 sunk deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-death. 
 The very falsehoods of Mahomet are truer than the 
 truths of such a man. He is the insincere man: 
 smooth-polished, respectable in some times and places; 
 inoffensive, says nothing harsh to any body; most 
 cleanly^ — just as carbonic acid is, which is death 
 and poison. 
 
 We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as 
 always of the superfinest sort; yet it can be said that 
 there is always a tendency to good in them: that 
 they are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards 
 what is just and true. The sublime forgiveness of 
 Christianity, turning of the other cheek when the 
 one has been smitten, is not here; you are to re- 
 venge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not over 
 much nor beyond justice. On the other hand, Islam, 
 like any great Faith, and insight into the essence of 
 man, is a perfect equalizer of men: the soul of one 
 believer outweighs all earthly kingships; all men, 
 according to Islam too, are equal. Mahomet insists 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 93 
 
 not on the propriety of giving alms, but on the ne- 
 cessity of it: he marks down by law how much you 
 are to give, and it is at your peril if you neglect. 
 The tenth part of man's annual income, whatever 
 that may be, is the property of the poor, of those that 
 are afflicted and need help. Good all this: the natu- 
 ral voice of humanity, of pity and equity dwelling 
 in the heart of this wild Son of Nature speaks so. 
 
 Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual: 
 true; in the one and the other there is enough that 
 shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But we are to re- 
 collect that the Arabs already had it so; that Ma- 
 homet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and 
 diminished all this. The worst sensualities, too, are 
 the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. 
 In the Koran there is really very little said about the 
 joys of Paradise; they are intimated rather than in- 
 sisted on. Nor is it forgotten that the highest joys 
 even there shall be spiritual; the Pure Presence of 
 the Highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other 
 joys. He says, " Your salutation shall be, Peace." 
 Salam, Have Peace! — the thing that all rational souls 
 long for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one 
 blessing. "Ye shall sit on seats, facing one another: 
 all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts." 
 All grudges! Ye shall love one another freely; for 
 each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there will 
 be Heaven enough ! 
 
 In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and 
 Mahomet's sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for 
 us, there were many things to be said; which it is 
 not convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks 
 only I shall make, and therewith leave it to your 
 candour. The first is furnished me by Goethe; it is 
 8* 
 
94 THE HERO AS PROPHET. 
 
 a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking 
 note of. In one of his delineations, in Meister's 
 Travels it is, the hero comes upon a Society of men 
 with very strange ways, one of which was this: " We 
 require," says the Master, " that each of our people 
 shall restrict himself in one direction," shall go right 
 against his desire in one matter, and make himself 
 do the thing he does not wish, " should we allow him 
 the greater latitude on all other sides." There seems 
 to me a great justness in this. Enjoying things 
 which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the 
 reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that 
 is. Let a man assert withal that he is king over his 
 habitudes; that he could and would shake them off, 
 on cause shown; this is an excellent law. The 
 month Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Ma- 
 homet's Religion, much in his own Life, bears in 
 that direction; if not by forethought, or clear pur- 
 pose of moral improvement on his part, then by a 
 certain healthy manful instinct, which is as good. 
 
 But there is another thing to be said about the Ma- 
 hometan Heaven and Hell. This, namely, that how- 
 ever gross and material they may be, they are an 
 emblem of an everlasting truth, not always so well 
 remembered elsewhere. That gross sensual Para- 
 dise of his; that horrible naming Hell; the great 
 enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually insists 
 on: what is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude 
 Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual Fact, 
 and Beginning of Facts, which it is ill for us too if 
 we do not all know and feel: the Infinite Nature of 
 Duty? That man's actions here are of infinite mo- 
 ment to him, and never die or end at all; that man, 
 with his little life, reaches upwards high as Heaven, 
 
LECT. II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 95 
 
 downwards low as Hell, and in his three-score years 
 of Time holds an Eternity fearfully and wonderfully 
 hidden: all this had burnt itself, as in flame-charac- 
 ters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and light- 
 ning, it stands written there; awful, unspeakable, 
 ever present to him. With bursting earnestness, 
 with a fierce savage sincerity, half-articulating, not 
 able to articulate, he strives to speak it, bodies it 
 forth in that Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in 
 what way you will, it is the first of all truths. It is 
 venerable under all imbodiments. What is the chief 
 end of man here below? Mahomet has answered 
 this question, in a way that might put some of us to 
 shame! He doe's not, like a Bentham, a Paley, take 
 Right and Wrong, and calculate the profit and loss, 
 ultimate pleasure of the one and of the other; and 
 summing all up by addition and subtraction into a 
 net result, ask you, Whether on the whole the Right 
 does not preponderate considerably? No: it is not 
 better to do the one than the other; the one is to the 
 other as life is to death,— as Heaven is to Hell. The 
 one must in nowise be done, the other in nowise left 
 undone. You shall not measure them: they are in- 
 commensurable: the one is death eternal to a man, 
 the other is Life eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue 
 by Profit and Loss; reducing this God's-world to a 
 dead brute Steam-engine, the infinite celestial Soul 
 of Man to a kind of Hay-balance for weighing hay 
 and thistles on, pleasures and pains on: — If you ask 
 me which gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier 
 and falser view of Man and his Destinies in this 
 
 Universe, I will answer, It is not Mahomet! 
 
 On the whole, we will repeat that this religion of 
 Mahomet's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine 
 
j96 the hero as prophet. 
 
 element of what is spiritually highest looking through 
 it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The 
 Scandinavian God Wish the god of all rude men, — 
 this has been enlarged into a Heaven by Mahomet; 
 but a heaven symbolical of sacred Duty, and to be 
 earned by faith and well doing, by valiant action, 
 and a divine patience which is still more valiant. It 
 is Scandinavian Paganism, and a truly celestial ele- 
 ment superadded to that. Call it not false; look not 
 at the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For 
 these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and 
 life-guidance of tbe fifth part of the whole kindred 
 of mankind. Above all things it has been a religion 
 heartily believed. These Arabs believe their religion, 
 and try to live by it! No Christians, since the early 
 ages, or only perhaps the English Puritans in modern 
 times, have ever stood by their Faith as the Moslems 
 do by theirs, — believing it wholly, fronting Time with 
 it, and Eternity with it. This night the watchman 
 on the streets of Cairo when he cries, "Who goes?" 
 will hear from the passenger, along with his answer, 
 "There is no God but God." Allah akbar, Islam, 
 sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, 
 of these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries preach 
 it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idola- 
 ters; — displacing what is worse, nothing that is bet- 
 ter or good. 
 
 To the Arab Nation it was a birth from darkness 
 into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. 
 A poor shepherd jueople, roaming unnoticed in its 
 deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero- 
 Prophet was sent down to them with a word they 
 could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world- 
 notable, the small has grown world-great; within 
 
LECT. II. *THE HERO AS PROPHET. 97 
 
 one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this 
 hand, at Delhi on that; — glancing in valour and 
 splendour and the light of genius, Arabia shines 
 through long ages over a great section of the world. 
 Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation 
 becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it 
 believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that 
 one century, — is it not as if a spark had fallen, one 
 spark, on a world of what seemed black unnotice- 
 able sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, 
 blazes heaven high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, 
 the Great Man was always as lightning out of Hea- 
 ven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and 
 then they too would flame. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 [Tuesday, 12th May, 1840.] 
 THE HERO AS POET. — DANTE: SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are 
 productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the 
 new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of concep- 
 tion, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge 
 puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a 
 world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if 
 men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow- 
 man either a god or one speaking with the voice of 
 a god. Divinity and Prophet are past. We are now 
 to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less 
 questionable, character of Poet; a character which 
 does not pass. The Poet is a heroic figure belonging 
 to all ages; whom all ages possess, when once he is 
 produced, whom the newest age as the oldest may 
 produce; — and will produce, always when Nature 
 pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul; in no age is 
 it other than possible that he may be shaped into a 
 Poet. 
 
 Hero, Prophet, Poet, — many different names, in 
 different times and places, do we give to Great Men; 
 according to varieties we note in them, according to 
 the sphere in which they have displayed themselves! 
 We might give many more names, on this same 
 principle. I will remark again, however, as a fact 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 99 
 
 not unimportant to be understood, that the different 
 sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; 
 that the Hero can be a Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or 
 what you will, according to the kind of world he 
 finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion 
 of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men. 
 The Poet who could merely sit on a chair and com- 
 pose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. 
 He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he him- 
 self were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there 
 is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, 
 Philosopher; — in one or the other degree, he could 
 have been, he is all these. So too 1 cannot under- 
 stand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, 
 with the fire that was in it, with the bursting tears 
 that were in it, could not have written verses, trage- 
 dies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had 
 his course of life and education led him thitherward. 
 The grand fundamental character is that of Great 
 Man; that the man be great. Napoleon has words 
 in him which are like Austerlitz Battles. Louis 
 Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men 
 withal; the things Turenne says are full of sagacity 
 and geniality, like sayings of Samuel Johnson. The 
 great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye: there it lies; 
 no man whatever, in what province soever, can pros- 
 per at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio did 
 diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well: one can 
 easily believe it; they had done things a little harder 
 than that ! Burns, a gifted song-writer, might have 
 made a still better Mirabeau. Shakspeare, — one 
 knows not what he could not have made, in the su- 
 preme degree. 
 
 True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature 
 
100 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 does not make all great men, more than all other 
 men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude 
 doubtless; but infinitely more of circumstance; and 
 far oftenest it is the latter only that are looked to. 
 But it is as with common men in the learning of 
 trades. You take any man, as yet a vague capabi- 
 lity of a man, who could be any kind of craftsman; 
 and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: 
 he is then and thenceforth that and nothing else. 
 And if, as Addison complains, you sometimes see a 
 street-porter staggering under his load on spindle- 
 shanks, and near at hand a tailor with the frame of 
 a Samson, handling a bit of cloth and small White- 
 chapel needle, — it cannot be considered that aptitude 
 of Nature alone has been consulted here either ! — 
 The Great Man also, to what shall he be bound 
 apprentice ? Given your Hero, is he to become 
 Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? It is an inex- 
 plicably complex controversial-calculation between 
 the world and him! He will read the world and its 
 laws; the world with its laws will be there to be 
 read. What the world, on this matter, shall permit 
 and bid is, as we said, the most important fact about 
 the world. 
 
 Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern 
 notions of them. In some old languages, again, the 
 titles are synonymous: Vates means both Prophet 
 and Poet: and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, 
 well understood, have much kindred of meaning. 
 Fundamentally indeed they are still the same; in 
 this most important respect especially, That they 
 have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery 
 of the Universe; what Goethe calls " the open secret!" 
 "Which is the great secret?" asks one. — " The open 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 101 
 
 secret," — open to all, seen by almost none? That 
 divine mystery, which lies eve^ where in all Beings, 
 " the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at 
 the bottom of Appearance," as Fichte styles it; of 
 which all Appearance, from the starry sky to the 
 grass of the field, but especially the Appearance of 
 Man and his work, is but the vesture, the imbodiment 
 that renders it visible. This divine mystery is in all 
 times and in all places; veritably is. In most times 
 and places it is greatly overlooked; and the Universe, 
 definable always in one or the other dialect, as the 
 realized Thought of God, is considered a trivial, inert, 
 common-place matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it were 
 a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put toge- 
 ther! It could do no good, at present, to speak much 
 about this ; but it is a pity for every one of us if we 
 do not know it, live ever in the knowledge of it. 
 Really a most mournful pity; — a failure to live at all, 
 if we live otherwise! 
 
 But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine 
 mystery, the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet has 
 penetrated into it; is a man sent hither to make it 
 more impressively known to us. That always is his 
 message; he is to reveal that to us, — that sacred 
 mystery which he more than others lives ever pre- 
 sent with. While others forget it, he knows it; I 
 might say, he has been driven to know it; without 
 consent asked of him, lie finds himself living in it, 
 bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, 
 but a direct Insight and Belief; this man too could 
 not help being a sincere man! Whosoever may live 
 in the show of things, it is for him a necessity of 
 nature to live in the very fact of things. A man, 
 once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all 
 9 
 
102 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 others were but toying with it. He is a Vates, first 
 of all, in virtue of being sincere. So far Poet and 
 Prophet, participators in the "open secret," are one. 
 
 With respect to their distinction again: The Vates 
 Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mys- 
 tery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty 
 and Prohibition; the Vates Poet on what the Germans 
 call the aesthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The 
 one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the 
 other of what we are to love. But indeed these two 
 provinces run into one another, and cannot be dis- 
 joined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we 
 are to love: how else shall he know what it is we 
 are to do? The highest Voice ever heard on this 
 Earth said withal, "Consider the lilies of the field-, 
 they toil not, neither do they spin: yet Solomon in 
 all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." A 
 glance, that, into the deepest deep of beauty. " The 
 lilies of the field," — dressed finer than earthly princes, 
 springing up there in the humble furrow-field; a beau- 
 tiful eye looking out on you, from the great inner Sea 
 of Beauty! How could the rude Earth make these, 
 if her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not 
 inwardly Beauty? — In this point of view, too, a say- 
 ing of Goethe's which has staggered several, may 
 have meaning: "The Beautiful/' he intimates, "is 
 higher than the Good; the Beautiful includes in it 
 the Good." The true Beautiful; which, however, 1 
 have said somewhere, "differs from the false, as Hea- 
 ven does from Vauxhall!" So much for the distinc- 
 tion and identity of Poet and Prophet. — 
 
 In ancient and also in modern periods, we find a 
 few Poets who are accounted perfect; whom it were 
 a kind of treason to find fault with. This is note- 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 103 
 
 Worthy; this is right: yet in strictness it is only an 
 illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no per- 
 fect Poet. A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all 
 men: no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are 
 all poets when we read a poem well. The "imagi- 
 nation that shudders at the Hell of Dante," is not that 
 the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? 
 No one but Shakspeare can imbody, out of Saxo 
 Grammaticns, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare 
 did : but every one models some kind of story out of it; 
 every one imbodies it better or worse. We need not 
 spend time in denning. Where there is no specific 
 difference, as between round and square, all defini- 
 tion must be more or less arbitrary. A man that has 
 so much more of the poetic element developed in him 
 as to have become noticeable, will be called Poet by 
 his neighbours. World-Poets too, those whom we 
 are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in 
 the same way. One who rises so far above the ge- 
 neral level of Poets will, to such and such critics, 
 seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet 
 it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, 
 all men, have some touches of the Universal; no 
 man is wholly made of that. Most Poets are very 
 soon forgotten; but not the noblest Shakspeare or 
 Homer of them can be remembered for ever; — a day 
 comes when he too is not! 
 
 Nevertheless, j^ou will say, there must be a dif- 
 ference between true Poetry and true Speech not 
 poetical: what is the difference? On this point many 
 things have been written, especially by late German 
 Critics, some of which are not very intelligible at first. 
 They say, for example, that the Poet has an infini- 
 tude in him; communicates an Unendlichkeit, a cer 
 
104 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 tain character of " infinitude " to whatsoever he deli- 
 neates. This, though not very precise, yet on so 
 vague a matter is worthy remembering; if well me- 
 ditated, some meaning can gradually be found in it. 
 For my own part, I find considerable meaning in 
 the old vulgar distinction of Poetry being metrical, 
 having music in it, being a Song. Truly, if pressed to 
 give a definition, one might say this as soon as any 
 thing else: If your delineation be authentically musi- 
 cal, musical not in word only, but in heart and sub- 
 stance, in all the thoughts and utterances of it, in the 
 whole conception of it, then it will be poetical; if not, 
 not. — Musical: how much lies in that! A musical 
 thought is one spoken by a mind that has penetrated 
 into the inmost heart of the thing; detected the in- 
 most mystery of it, namely the melody that lies hidden 
 in it; the inward harmony of coherence which is its 
 soul; whereby it exists, and has a right to be here in 
 this world. All inmost things, we may say, are me- 
 lodious; naturally utter themselves in Song. The 
 meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in 
 logical words, can express the effect music has on us ? 
 A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech which 
 leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for 
 moments gaze into that! 
 
 Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has 
 something of song in it: not a parish in the world 
 but has its parish-accent; — the rhythm or tune to 
 which the people there sing what they have to say! 
 Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent of 
 their own, — though they only notice that of others. 
 Observe too how all passionate language does of it- 
 self become musical, — with a finer music than the 
 mere accent; the speech of a man even in zealous 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 105 
 
 anger becomes a chant, a Song. All deep things 
 are Song. It seems somehow the very central es- 
 sence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrap- 
 pages and hulls! The primal element of us; of us, 
 and of all things. The Greeks fabled of Sphere- 
 Harmonies: it was the feeling they had of the inner 
 structure of Nature; that the soul of all her voices 
 and utterances was perfect music. Poetry, therefore, 
 we will call musical Thought. The Poet is he who 
 thinks in that manner. At bottom, it turns still on 
 power of intellect; it is a man's sincerity and depth 
 of vision that makes him a Poet. See deep enough, 
 and you see musically; the heart of nature being 
 every where music, if you can only reach it. 
 
 The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of 
 Nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in com- 
 parison with the Vates Prophet; his function, and our 
 esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The 
 Hero taken as Divinity; the Hero taken as Prophet; 
 then next the Hero taken only as Poet: does it not 
 look as if our estimate of the Great Man, epoch after 
 epoch, were continually diminishing? We take him 
 first for a god, then for one god-inspired; and now 
 in the next stage of it, his most miraculous word gains 
 from us only the recognition that he is a Poet, beau- 
 tiful verse-maker, man of genius, or such like! — It 
 looks so; but I persuade myself that intrinsically it 
 is not so. If we consider well, it will perhaps appear 
 that in man still there is the same altogether peculiar 
 admiration for the Heroic Gift, by what name soever 
 called, that there at any time was. I should say, if 
 we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, 
 i-t is that our notions of God, of the supreme unattain- 
 able Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom and Heroism, 
 9* 
 
106 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 are ever rising higher; not altogether that our reve- 
 rence for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is 
 getting lower. This is worth taking thought of. 
 Skeptical Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a 
 curse which will not last for ever, does indeed in this 
 the highest province of human things, as in all pro- 
 vinces, make sad work; and our reverence for great 
 men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes 
 out in poor plight, hardly recognisable. Men wor- 
 ship the shows of great men; the most disbelieve that 
 there is any reality of great men to worship. The 
 dreariest, fatalest faith ; believing which one would 
 literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, 
 for example, at Napoleon! A Corsican lieutenant of 
 artillery: that is the show of him: yet is he not obey- 
 ed, ivorshippcd after his sort, as all the Tiaraed and 
 Diademed of the world put together could not be ? 
 High duchesses, and ostlers of inns, gather round the 
 Scottish rustic, Burns; — a strange feeling dwelling in 
 each that they never heard a man like this; that on 
 the whole this is the man! In the secret heart of 
 these people it still dimly reveals itself, though there 
 is no accredited way of uttering it at present, that this 
 rustic, with his black brows, and flashing sun-eyes, 
 and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a 
 dignity far beyond all others, incommensurable with 
 all others. Do not we feel it so? But now, were 
 Dilettantism, Skepticism, Triviality, and all that sor- 
 rowful brood cast out of us, — as, by God's blessing, 
 they shall one day be; were faith in the shows of 
 things entirely swept out, replaced by clear faith in 
 the things, so that a man acted on the impulse of that 
 only, and counted the other non-extant, what a new 
 livelier feeling towards this Burns were it! 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 107 
 
 Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we 
 not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say be- 
 atified? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry; 
 really, if we will think of it, canonized, so that it is 
 impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct 
 of the world, working across all these perverse im- 
 pediments, has arrived at such result. Dante and 
 Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. They dwell apart, 
 in a kind of royal solitude; none equal, none second 
 to them: in the general feeling of the world, a cer- 
 tain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfec- 
 tion, invests these two. They are canonized, though 
 no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it! Such, 
 in spite of every perverting influence, in the most 
 unheroic times, is still our indestructible reverence 
 for heroism. — We will look a little at these Two, the 
 Poet Dante and the Poet Shakspeare: what little it 
 is permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet, will 
 most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. 
 
 Many volumes have been written by way of com- 
 mentary on Dante and his Book; yet, on the whole 
 with no great result. His Biography is, as it were, 
 irrecoverably lost for us. An unimportant, wander- 
 ing, sorrow-stricken man, not much note was taken 
 of him while he lived; and the most of that has va- 
 nished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is 
 five centuries since he ceased writing and living here. 
 After all commentaries, the Book itself is mainly 
 what we know of him. The Book; — and one might 
 add that Portrait commonly attributed to Giotto, 
 which, looking on it, you cannot help inclining to 
 think genuine whoever did it. To me it is a most 
 touching face; perhaps of all faces that I know, the 
 
10S THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 most so. Blank there, painted on vacancy, with the 
 simple laurel wound round it; the deathless sorrow 
 and pain, the known victory which is also deathless; 
 — significant of the whole history of Dante! I think 
 it is the mournfullest face that ever was painted from 
 reality; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. 
 There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, ten- 
 derness, gentle affection as of a child; but all this is 
 as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnega- 
 tion, isolation, proud hopeless pain. A soft ethereal 
 soul looking out so stern, implacable, grim-trenchant, 
 as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice! Withal it 
 is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one: the lip is 
 curled in a kind of god-like disdain of the thing that is 
 eating out its heart, — as if it were withal a mean in- 
 significant thing, as if he whom it had power to torture 
 and strangle were greater than it. The face of one 
 wholly in protest, and life-long unsurrendering bat- 
 tle, against the world. Affection all converted into in- 
 dignation: an implacable indignation: slow, equable, 
 implacable, silent, like that of a god! The eye too, 
 it looks out as in a kind o£ surprise, a kind of inquiry, 
 Why the world was of such a sort? This is Dante; 
 so he looks, this " voice of ten silent centuries," and 
 sings us "his mystic unfathomable song." 
 
 The little that we know of Dante's Life corre- 
 sponds well enough with this Portrait and this Book. 
 He was born at Florence, in the upper class of society, 
 in the year 1265. His education was the best then 
 going; much school-divinity, Aristotelean logic, some 
 Latin classics, — no inconsiderable insight into certain 
 provinces of things; and Dante, with his earnest, in- 
 telligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better 
 than most all that was learnable. He has a clear 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 109 
 
 cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety; this 
 best fruit of education he had contrived to realize from 
 these scholastics. He knows accurately and well 
 what lies close to him; b«t, in such a time, without 
 printed books or free intercourse, he could not know 
 well what was distant: the small clear light, most 
 luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular 
 chiaroscuro striking on what is far off. This was 
 Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had 
 gone through the usual destinies: been twice out cam- 
 paigning as a soldier for the Florentine state, been on 
 embassy; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gra- 
 dation of talent and service, become one of the Chief 
 Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood 
 a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of 
 his own age and rank, and grown up thenceforth in 
 partial sight of her, in some distant intercourse with 
 her. All readers know his graceful affecting account 
 of this; and then of their being parted; of her being 
 wedded to another, and of her death soon after. She 
 makes a great figure in Dante's Poem; seems to have 
 made a great figure in his life. Of all beings it might 
 seem as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last 
 in the dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever 
 with his whole strength of affection loved. She died: 
 Dante himself was wedded; but it seems not happily, 
 far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, 
 with his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy 
 to make happy. 
 
 We will not complain of Dante's miseries: had all 
 gone right with him as he wished it, he might have 
 been Prior, Podesta, or whatsoever they call it, of 
 Florence, well accepted among neighbours, — and 
 the world had wanted one of the most notable words 
 
110 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 ever spoken or sung. Florence had another prospe- 
 rous Lord Mayor; and the ten dumb centuries con- 
 tinued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries 
 (for there will be ten of them and more) had no Di- 
 vina Commedia to hear! We will complain of nothing. 
 A nobler destiny was appointed for this Dante; and 
 he, struggling like a man led towards death and cru- 
 cifixion, could not help fulfilling it. Give him the 
 choice of his happiness! He knew not more than we 
 do what was really happy, what was really miserable. 
 
 In Dante's Priorship, the Guelf-Ghibelline, Bian- 
 chi-Neri, or some other confused disturbances rose to 
 such a height, that Dante, whose party had seemed 
 the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly 
 forth into banishment; doomed thenceforth to a life 
 of wo and wandering. His property was all confis- 
 cated and more; he had the fiercest feeling that it 
 was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God 
 and man. He tried what was in him to get rein- 
 stated ; tried even by warlike surprisal, with arms in 
 his hand: but it would not do; bad only had become 
 worse. There is a record, I believe, still extant in 
 the Florence Archives, dooming this Dante, where- 
 soever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive; so it 
 stands, they say: a very curious civic document. 
 Another curious document, some considerable num- 
 ber of years later, is a Letter of Dante's to the Flo- 
 rentine Magistrates, written in answer to a milder pro- 
 posal of theirs, that he should return on condition of 
 apologizing and paying a fine. He answers with fixed, 
 stern pride, "If I cannot return without calling my- 
 self guilty, I will never return, niinquam revertar." 
 
 For Dante there was now no home in this world. 
 He wandered from patron to patron, from place to 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS rOET. Ill 
 
 place; proving, in his own bitter words, "How hard 
 is the path, Come e duro calle" The wretched are 
 not cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, 
 with his proud earnest nature, with his moody hu- 
 mours, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch 
 reports of him that being at Can della Scala's court, 
 and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he 
 answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala stood 
 among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (iiebu- 
 lones ac histriones) making him heartily merry; when 
 turning to Dante, he said: "Is it not strange now 
 that this poor fool should do so much to amuse us, 
 while you, a wise man, sit there day after day, and 
 have nothing to amuse us with at all?" Dante an- 
 swered bitterly : "No, it is not strange, if you think 
 of the proverb, Like to Like;" — given the amuser, 
 the amusee must also be given ! Such a man, with 
 his proud silent ways, with his sarcasms and sorrows, 
 was not made to succeed at court. By degrees, it 
 came to be evident to him that he had no longer 
 any resting place, or hope of benefit, in this earth. 
 The earthly world had cast him forth, to wander, 
 wander; no living heart to love him now; for his 
 sore miseries there was no solace here. 
 
 The deeper naturally would the Eternal World 
 impress itself on him; that awful reality over which, 
 after all, this Time-world, with its Florences and 
 banishments, only flutters as an unreal shadow. 
 Florence thou shalt never see: but Hell and Purga- 
 tory and Heaven thou shalt surely see! What is 
 Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life 
 altogether? Eternity: thither, of a truth, not 
 elsewhither, art thou and all things bound! The 
 great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its 
 
112 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 home more and more in that awful other world. 
 Naturally his thoughts brooded on that, as on the 
 one fact important for him. Bodied or bodiless, it 
 is the one fact important for all men: — but to Dante, 
 in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scien- 
 tific shape; he no more doubted of that Malebo/ge 
 Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy circles, 
 with its altiguai, and that he himself should see it, 
 than we doubt that we should see Constantinople if 
 we went thither. Dante's heart, long filled with this, 
 brooding over it in speechless thought and awe, burst 
 forth at length into "mystic unfathomable song;" 
 and this his Divine Comedy, the most remarkable of 
 all modern Books, is the result. It must have been 
 a great solacement to Dante, and was, as we can see, 
 a proud thought for him at times, that he, here in 
 exile, could do this work; that no Florence, nor no 
 man or men, could hinder him from doing it, or even 
 much help him in doing it. He knew too partly, 
 that it was great; the greatest a man could do. " If 
 thou follow thy star, Se tu segui la tua stella " — so 
 could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in his extreme 
 need, still say to himself: "Follow thy star, thou 
 shalt not fail of a glorious heaven !" The labour 
 of writing, we find, and indeed could know other- 
 wise, was great and painful for him; he says, This 
 Book "which has made me lean for many years." 
 Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil, 
 — not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as 
 indeed most good Books are, has been written, in 
 many senses with his heart's blood. It is his whole 
 history this Book. He died after finishing it; not 
 yet very old, at the age of fifty-six ; — broken-heart- 
 ed rather, as is said. He lies buried in his death- 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 113 
 
 city Ravenna: Hie claudor Dantes pair Us extorris 
 aborts. The Florentines begged back his body, in a 
 century after; the Ravenna people would not give it. 
 " Here am I Dante laid, shut out from my native 
 shores." 
 
 I said, Dante's Poem was a song: it is Tieck who 
 calls it "a mystic unfathomable Song;" and such is 
 literally the character of it. Coleridge remarks very 
 pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a 
 sentence musically worded, if true rhythm and 
 melody in the words, there is something deep and 
 good in the meaning too. For body and soul, word 
 and idea, go strangely together, here as every where. 
 Song: we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech! 
 All old Poems, Homer's and the rest, are authenti- 
 cally Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right 
 Poems are; that whatsoever is not sung- is properly 
 no Poem, but a piece of Prose cramped into jingling 
 lines, — to the great injury of the grammar, to the 
 great grief of the reader, for most part! What we want 
 to get at is the thought the man had, if he had any: 
 why should he twist it into jingle, if he could speak 
 it out plainly? ' It is only when the heart of him is 
 rapt into true passion of melody, and the very tones 
 of him, according to Coleridge's remark, become 
 musical by the greatness, depth, and music of his 
 thoughts, that we can give him right to rhyme and 
 sing; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as 
 the Heroic of Speakers, whose speech is Song. Pre- 
 tenders to this are many; and to an earnest reader, 1 
 doubt, it is for most part a very melancholy, not to 
 say an insupportable business, that of reading rhyme ! 
 Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed ; 
 —it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, 
 10 
 
114 THE HERO A3 POET. 
 
 what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who 
 can speak their thought, not to sing it; to understand 
 that, in a serious time, among serious men, there is 
 no vocation in them for singing it. Precisely as we 
 love the true song, and are charmed by it as by some- 
 thing divine, so shall we hate the false song, and ac- 
 count it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, super- 
 fluous, altogether an insincere and offensive thing. 
 
 I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his 
 Divine Comedy, that it is, in all senses, genuinely a 
 Song. In the very sound of it there is a canto fer mo; 
 it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple 
 terza rima, doubtless helped him in this. One 
 reads along naturally with a sort of lilt. But 1 add, 
 that it could not be otherwise; for the essence and 
 material of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its 
 depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it musi- 
 cal; — go deep enough, there is a music every where. 
 A true inward symmetry, what one calls an architec- 
 tural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all: 
 architectural; which also partakes of the character of 
 music. The three kingdoms, Inferno, Purgatorio, 
 Paradiso, look out on one another like compartments 
 of a great edifice; a great supernatural world-cathe- 
 dral, piled up there, stern, solemn, awful; Dante's 
 World of Souls ! It is, at bottom, the sincerest of all 
 Poems; sincerity, here too, we find to be the mea- 
 sure of worth. It came deep out of the author's 
 heart of hearts; and it goes deep, and through long 
 generations, into ours.." The people of Verona, when 
 they saw him on the streets, used to say, " Eccovi 
 V uom cK 1 e stato alV Inferno, See, there is the man 
 that was in Hell!" Ah, yes, he had been in Hell; 
 — in Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and strug- 
 
>ECT. III. THE HERO A3 POET. 115 
 
 
 gle; as the like of him is pretty sure to have been. 
 Commedias that come out divine, are not accom- 
 plished otherwise. Thought, true labour of any kind, 
 highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of pain? 
 Born as out of the black whirlwind; — true effort, in 
 fact, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is 
 Thought. In all ways we are " to become perfect 
 through suffering." — But, as 1 say, no work known 
 to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has all 
 been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. 
 It had made him "lean" for many years. Not the 
 general whole only; every compartment of it is 
 worked out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into 
 clear visuality. Each answers to the other; each fits 
 in its place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and 
 polished. It is the soul of Dante, and in this the soul 
 of the middle ages, rendered for ever rhythmically 
 visible there. No.light task; a right intense one: but 
 a task which is doye. 
 
 Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much 
 that depends on it, is the prevailing character of 
 Dante's genius. Dante does not come before us as a 
 large catholic mind; rather as a narrow, and even 
 sectarian mind: it is partly the fruit of his age and 
 position, but partly too of his own nature. His great- 
 ness has, in all senses, concentred itself into fiery 
 emphasis and depth. \ He is world-great not because 
 
 he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep 
 
 Through all objects he pierces as it were down into 
 the heart of Being. I know nothing so intense as 
 Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with the 
 outermost development of his intensity, consider 
 how he paints. He has a great power of vision ; seizes 
 the very type of a thing; presents that and nothing 
 
116 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 more. You remember that first view he gets of the 
 Hall of Dite: red pinnacle, red-hot cone of iron glow- 
 ing through the dim immensity of gloom; — so vivid, 
 so distinct, visible at once and for ever! It is an 
 emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a 
 brevity, an abrupt precision in him; Tacitus is not 
 briefer, more condensed; and then in Dante it seems 
 a natural condensation, spontaneous to the man. One 
 smiting word: and then there is silence, nothing more 
 said. His silence is more eloquent than words. It is 
 strange with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches 
 the true likeness of a matter; cuts into the matter as 
 with a pen of fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, col- 
 lapses at Virgil's rebuke; it is "as the sails sink, the 
 mast being suddenly broken." Or that poor Sordello, 
 with the cotto aspetto, "face baked" parched brown 
 and lean; and the "fiery snow" that falls on them 
 there, a " fiery snow without wind," slow, deliberate, 
 never-ending! Or the lids of those Tombs; square 
 sarcophaguses, in that silent, dim-burning Hall, each 
 with its Soul in torment; the lids laid open there: 
 they are to be shut at the day of Judgment, through 
 Eternity. And how Farinati rises; and how Caval- 
 cante falls — at hearing of his Son, and the past tense 
 "fue!" The very movements in Dante have some- 
 thing brief; swift, decisive, almost military. It is 
 of the inmost essence of his genius this sort of paint- 
 ing. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so 
 silent, passionate, with its quick abrupt movements, 
 its silent "pale rages," speaks itself in these things. 
 For though this of painting is one of the outermost 
 developments of a man, it comes like all else from 
 the essential faculty of him; it is physiognomical of 
 the whole man. Find a man whose w r ords paint you 
 
LECT. III. 
 
 THE HERO AS POET. 117 
 
 a likeness, you have found a man worth something; f/ 
 mark his manner of doing it, as very characteristic of 
 him. 'In the first place he could not have discerned 
 the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless 
 he had, what we may call, sympathized with it,-— had 
 sympathy in him to bestow on objects. He must 
 have been sincere, about it too; sincere and sympa- 
 thetic: a man without worth cannot give you the 
 likeness of any object; he dwells in vague outward- ' 
 ness, fallacy, and trivial hearsay, about all objects. 
 And indeed may we not say that intellect, altogether 
 expresses itself in this power of discerning what an 
 object is? Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may 
 have will come out here. Is it even of business, a 
 matter to be done? The gifted man is he who sees 
 the essential point, and leaves all the rest aside as 
 surplusage: it is his faculty too, the man of business's 
 faculty, that he discern the true likeness, not the false 
 superficial one, of the thing he has got to work in. 
 And how much of morality is in the kind of insight 
 we get of any thing; "the eye seeing in all things 
 what it brought with it the faculty of seeing !" To 
 the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to 
 the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Paint- 
 ers tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. 
 No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of 
 any object. In the commonest human face there lies 
 more than Raphael will take away with him. 
 
 Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, 
 and of a vividness as of fire in dark night; taken on 
 the wider scale, it is every way noble, and the out- 
 come of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, what 
 qualities in that! A thing woven as out of rainbows, 
 on a ground of eternal black. A small flute voice of 
 10* 
 
US THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of 
 hearts..* A touch of womanhood in it too; she speaks 
 of " quest a forma f* — so innocent; and how/even in 
 the Pit of wo, it is a solace that he will " never part 
 from her." Saddest tragedy in these altiguai. And 
 the racking winds, in that aer bruno, whirl them away 
 again for ever! — Strange to think: Dante was the 
 friend of this poor Francesca's father; Francesca her- 
 self may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a bright 
 innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite 
 rigour of law: it is so Nature is made; it is so Dante 
 discerned that she was made. What a paltry notion 
 is that of his Divine Comedy's being a poor splenetic 
 impotent terrestrial libel; putting those into Hell 
 whom he could not be avenged upon on earth! I 
 suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in the 
 heart of any man, it was in Dante's. But a man who 
 does not know rigour cannot pity either. His very 
 pity will be cowardly, egotistic, — sentimentality, or 
 little better. I know not in the world an affection 
 equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trem- 
 bling, longing, pitying love: like the wail of iEolian 
 harps, soft, soft; like a child's young heart; — and 
 then that stern, sore-saddened heart! These longings 
 of his towards his Beatrice; their meeting together 
 in the Paradiso; his gazing in her pure transfigured 
 eyes, her that had been purified by death so long, 
 separated from him so far: ah, one likens it to the 
 song of angels; it is among the purest utterances of 
 affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came 
 out of a human soul.' 
 
 For the intense Dante is intense in all things: he 
 has got into the essence of all. His intellectual in- 
 sight, as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 119 
 
 the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally 
 great, above all, we must call him; it is the begin- 
 ning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent 
 as his love; — as indeed what are they but the inverse 
 or converse of his love ? " A Bio spiacenti, edcC ne- 
 ?nici sui, Hateful to God and to the enemies of God :" 
 lofty scorn, unappeasable, silent reprobation and 
 aversion : " Non ragionem di lor, We will not speak 
 of them, look only and pass." Or think of this: 
 " They have not the hope to die, Non han speranza di 
 ?norte." One day, it had risen sternly benign on the 
 scathed heart of Dante, that he, wretched, never- 
 resting, worn as he was, would full surely die; "that 
 Destiny itself could not doom him not to die." Such 
 words are in this man. For rigour, earnestness and 
 depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world ; 
 to seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew 
 Bible, and live with the antique Prophets there. 
 
 I do not agree with much modern criticism, in 
 greatly preferring the inferno to the two other parts 
 of the Divine Commedia. Such preference belongs, 
 I imagine, to our general Byronism of taste, and is 
 like to be a transient feeling. The Purgatorio and 
 Paradiso, especially the former, one would almost 
 say, is even more excellent than it. It is a noble 
 thing that Purgatorio, "Mountain of Purification;" 
 an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. If 
 Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, 
 awful, yet in Repentance too is man purified; Re- 
 pentance is the grand Christian act. It is beautiful 
 how Dante works it out. The tremolar dell, onde, 
 that " trembling " of the ocean-waves, under the first 
 pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wan- 
 dering Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope 
 
120 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company 
 still with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of 
 demons and reprobate is under-foot; a soft breath- 
 ing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the 
 Throne of Mercy itself. "Pray for me," the deni- 
 zens of that Mount of Pain all say to him. "Tell 
 my Giovanna to pray for me," my daughter Giovan- 
 na; "I think her mother loves me no more!" They 
 toil painfully up by that winding steep, "bent down 
 like corbels" of a building, some of them, — crushed 
 together so "for the sin of pride;" yet nevertheless 
 in years, in ages and aeons, they shall have reached 
 the top, Heaven's gate, and by Mercy been admit- 
 ted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; 
 the whole Mountain shakes with joy, and a psalm 
 of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repent- 
 ance and got its sin and misery left behind! 1 call 
 all this a noble imbodiment of a true noble thought. 
 But indeed the Three compartments mutually sup- 
 port one another, are indispensable to one another. 
 The Paradlso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is 
 the redeeming side of the Inferno; the Inferno with- 
 out it were untrue. All three make up the true Un- 
 seen World as figured in the Christianity of the Mid- 
 dle Ages; a thing for ever memorable, for ever true 
 in the essence of it, to all men. It was perhaps de- 
 lineated in no human soul with such depth of vera- 
 city as in this of Dante's; a man sent to sing it, 
 to keep it long memorable. J Very notable with 
 what brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day 
 reality, into the Invisible one; and in the second or 
 third stanza, we find ourselves in the World of Spirits; 
 and dwell there, as among things palpable, indubi- 
 table! I'o Dante they were so; the real world, as 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 121 
 
 it is called, and its fact, was but the threshold to an 
 infinitely higher Fact of a World. At bottom, the 
 one was as^??*e/er-natural as the other. Has not each 
 man a soul? ; He will not only be a spirit, but is one: 
 To the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact; he 
 believes it, sees it; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. 
 rSincjerity, I say again, is the saving merit, now as 
 always/ 
 
 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 imbodiment, our sublimest, of the 
 soul of Christianity. It expresses, as in huge world- 
 wide architectural emblems, how the Christian Dante 
 felt Good and Evil to be the two popular 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 ever- 
 lasting Pity, — all Christianism, as Dante and the 
 Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. Emblemed; 
 and yet, as 1 urged the other day, with what entire 
 truth of purpose: how unconscious of any emblem- 
 ing! 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 every where confirming them? • So is 
 
122 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 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 differ- 
 ence of Paganism and Christianism; one great differ- 
 ence. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations 
 of Nature: the destinies, efforts, combinations, vicis- 
 situdes of things and men in the world; Christianism 
 emblemed the Laws 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 Divine 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 crafts- 
 man 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 in- 
 ventive 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 Chris- 
 tian Meditation of all the good men who had gone 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 123 
 
 before him. Precious they; but also is not he pre- 
 cious? 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 realized for itself? Christianism as Dante 
 sings it, is another than Paganism in the rude Norse 
 mind; another than " Bastard Christianism " half-ar- 
 ticulately spoken in the Arab Desert, seven hundred 
 years before! — The noblest idea made real hitherto 
 among men, is sung, and emblemed forth abiding- 
 ly, 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 in- 
 most 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, to-day and for ever,)/ True souls, 
 in all generations of the world, who look on this 
 Dante, will find a brotherhood in him; the deep sin- 
 cerity of his thoughts, his woes and hopes, will 
 speak likewise to their sincerity; they will feel that 
 this Dante too is a brother. Napoleon in Saint He- 
 lena is charmed with the genial veracity of old Ho- 
 mer. 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 the depth of sincerity, is 
 like an antique Prophet too; his words, like theirs, 
 come from his very heart. One need not wonder if 
 
124 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 it were predicted that his Poem might be the most 
 enduring thing our Europe has yet made; for no- 
 thing so endures as a truly spoken word. All ca- 
 thedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer 
 arrangement, never so lasting, are brief in compari- 
 son 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, 
 encyclopaedias, creeds, bodies of opinion and prac- 
 tice: 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, va- 
 nished; 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, 
 jxcept 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-roo/s 
 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 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 125 
 
 small in comparison? Not so: his arena is far more 
 restricted; but also it is far nobler, clearer; — per- 
 haps not less, but more important. Mahomet speaks 
 to great masses of men, in the coarse dialect adapted 
 to such; a dialect filled with inconsistencies, crudi- 
 ties, 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 pos- 
 session of all the chosen of the world for uncounted 
 time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive Ma- 
 homet. 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 imbodied in 
 Calif Thrones and Arabian Conquests, so that it 
 "fills all Morning and Evening Newspapers," and 
 all Histories, which are a kind of distilled Newspa- 
 pers; or not imbodied so at all; — what matters that? 
 That is not the real fruit of it! The Arabian Calif, 
 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 Calif, 
 then no matter how many cimeters he drew, how 
 many gold piastres pocketed, and what uproar and 
 blaring he made in this world, — he was but a loud- 
 sounding inanity and futility; at bottom, he teas not 
 11 
 
126 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 at all. Let us honour the great empire of Silence 
 once more! Ah yes, the boundless treasury which 
 we do not jingle in our pockets, or count up and pre- 
 sent 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 imbody musically the Religion of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, the Religion of our Modern Europe, its In- 
 ner Life; so Shakspeare, we may say, imbodies 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 every where, this other 
 sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his peren- 
 nial 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; Shak- 
 speare, wide, placid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the up- 
 per light of the world. Italy produced the one 
 world-voice; we English had the honour of pro- 
 ducing the other. 
 
 Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, 
 this man came tp us. I think always, so great, 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 127 
 
 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 it not 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 every 
 thing does co-operate with all* not a leaf rotting on 
 the highway but is indissoluble portion of solar and 
 stellar systems; no thought, wwd 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 
 Ilela 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 flow r erage 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. 1 For Religion then, 
 as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice; 
 
12S THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark 
 here, as rather curious, 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 appear- 
 ance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with 
 Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent 
 him forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parlia- 
 ment. 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 with- 
 out proclamation, preparation of ours. Priceless 
 Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature; given alto- 
 gether 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 intel- 
 lect 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, faculty of thought, 
 if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. 
 
T,ECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 129 
 
 Such a calmness of depth, placid joyous strength ; 
 all things imagined 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 Shak* 
 speare's Dramas there is, apart from all other "fa- 
 culties " as they are called, an understanding mani- 
 fested, 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, every way 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 Na- 
 ture 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. Winch 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 understand- 
 ing, will the fitness of his answer be. You will try 
 XI* 
 
130 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 him so. Does like join himself to like; the spirit of 
 method stir in that confusion, so that its embroilment 
 becomes order? Can the man say, Fiat lax, 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 perspica- 
 city 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. Crea- 
 tive, 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-con- 
 cave mirror, reflecting all objects with its own con- 
 vexities and concavities; a perfectly level mirror; — 
 that is to say withal, if we will understand Lt, 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 Organam, and all the intellect you 
 will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; 
 earthy, material, poor in comparison with this. Among 
 modern men one finds, in strictness, almost nothing 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 131 
 
 of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the days of 
 Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say 
 that he saiv the object; you may say what he him- 
 self says of Shakspeare. "His characters are like 
 watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they 
 show you the hour like others, and the inward me- 
 chanism also is all visible." 
 
 The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner 
 harmony of things; what Nature meant, what musi- 
 cal idea Nature has wrapped up in these often rough 
 imbodiments. 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 ex- 
 tremely 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 har- 
 mony 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 can- 
 
132 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 not 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 specu- 
 lation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old School- 
 master 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, 1 should say supe- 
 riority of Intellect, and think I had included all un- 
 der 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 indeed require us so to speak; 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 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 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS PROPHET. 133 
 
 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 where- 
 by he is and wOrks? All that a man does is phy- 
 siognomical 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, intel- 
 lect were impossible for him, he could not know 
 any thing at all! To know a thing, what we can 
 call knowing, a man must first love the thing, sym- 
 pathize w T ith it: that is, be virtuously related to it. 
 If he have not the justice to put down his own sel- 
 fishness 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 know T - 
 ledge. Nature with her truth remains to the bad, the 
 selfish, and the pusillanimous, for ever 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 every where 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 
 
134 the hero as poet. 
 
 his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune, and 
 other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, 
 prompitude, 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 mani- 
 fold very baleful perversion, in this time: what limi- 
 tations, modifications they require, your own candour 
 will supply. 
 
 If I say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest 
 of Intellects, I have said all about 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. Shak- 
 speare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is 
 not there by plan or pre-contrivance. It grows up 
 from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere 
 soul, who is a voice of Nature. The latest genera- 
 tions 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 de- 
 serves 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 ac- 
 complish, grow up withal unconsciously, from the 
 unknown deeps in him; — as the oak-tree grows from 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET- 135 
 
 the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters 
 shape themselves; with a symmetry grounded on 
 Nature's own laws, conformable to all Truth whatso- 
 ever. How much in Shakspeare lies hid; his sor- 
 rows, his silent struggles known to himself; much 
 that was not known at all, not speakable at all: like 
 roots, like sap and forces working under ground ! 
 Speech is great; but Silence is greater. 
 
 Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is no- 
 table. I will not blame Dante for his misery: it is 
 as battle without victory; but true battle, — the first, 
 indispensable thing. Yet 1 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 had not 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 
 off-hand, 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 mirth- 
 fulness, 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 
 
136 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt, 
 tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; 
 you would say roars and laughs. And then, if not 
 always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not 
 a 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 
 that they will get on well there, and continue Presi- 
 dents of the City-watch. — Such laughter, like sun- 
 shine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. 
 
 We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's indi- 
 vidual works; though perhaps there is much still 
 waiting to be said on that head. Had we, for in- 
 stance, 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 His- 
 torical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, which is 
 worth remembering. He calls them a kind of Na- 
 tional 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, 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 137 
 
 which, indeed, together form one beautiful thing. 
 That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the 
 most perfect things, in its sort, we any where 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, compa- 
 ratively 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 for ever; 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 Playhouse; 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. 
 12 
 
13S THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 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; 2mspeakable,\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 call 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 unison! — 
 I cannot call this Shakspeare a " Skeptic," 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 skeptic, though he says little about his Faith. 
 Such " indifference " was the fruit of his greatness 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 139 
 
 withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere 
 of worship; (we may call it such;) these other con- 
 troversies, 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, every way 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." I ask, 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 in- 
 trinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his 
 supreme Prophethood; and has come down to us in- 
 extricably involved in error to this day; dragging 
 along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intole- 
 rances, 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, Ma- 
 homet will have exhausted himself and become ob- 
 solete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante may be 
 still young; — while this Shakspeare may still pre- 
 tend 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 
 JEscbylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity 
 
140 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 and universality, last like them? He is sincere as 
 they; reaches deep down like them, to the univer- 
 sal 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 uncon- 
 scious: 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 ab- 
 surdity; 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 Southamp- 
 ton 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 Pea- 
 sant? 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, 
 
LECT. III. THE HERO AS POET. 141 
 
 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 Em- 
 pire, no Indian Empire; we cannot do without Shak- 
 speare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some 
 day^but this Shakspeare does not go, he lasts for 
 ever with us; we cannot give up our Shakspeare ! 
 
 Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering 
 him merely as a real, marketable, tangible, useful 
 possession. England, before long, this Island of 
 purs, 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 pro- 
 blem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and go- 
 vernments are here to accomplish: what is it that 
 will accomplish this? Acts of Parliament, adminis- 
 trative 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 sa}-, 
 is an English King, whom no time or chance, Par- 
 liament or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone! 
 This King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crown- 
 ed sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, 
 yet strongest of rallying-signs; z/zdestructible; real? 
 12* 
 
142 THE HERO AS POET. 
 
 ly 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 English- 
 men 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 dis- 
 membered, scattered asunder, not appearing in 
 any protocol or treaty as a unity at all; yet the no- 
 ble 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 can- 
 nons; 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 Rus- 
 sia can be. — We must here end what we had to say 
 of the Hero- Poet. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 [Friday, 15thMay, 1840.] 
 
 THE HERO AS PRIEST: LUTHER; REFORMATION; 
 
 KNOX; PURITANISM. 
 
 Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man 
 as Priest. We have repeatedly endeavoured to ex- 
 plain 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 man- 
 ner; there is given a Hero, — the outward shape of 
 whom will depend on the time and the environment 
 he finds himself in. 5 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 Uni- 
 ter of them with the Unseen Holy. He is the spi- 
 ritual 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! r He is the Prophet 
 shorn of his more awful splendour; burning with 
 mild equable radiance, as the enlightener of daily 
 
141 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 com- 
 mon sense. Yet it will suit us better here to consi- 
 der 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 ivay 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 labour as in smooth times, but to faith- 
 ful, valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismem- 
 bered : a more perilous service, 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, 1 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 
 d.iyjne .truth of things, a seer, seeing through the shows 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 145 
 
 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 Re- 
 former 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 Domi- 
 nies and Thebaid Eremites, there had been no me- 
 lodious Dante; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandi- 
 navian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from 
 Ulfina to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. 
 Nay, the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a symp- 
 tom 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 equa- 
 ble 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 realized. Alas, 
 
146 THE HERO AS PRIES?, 
 
 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 busi- 
 ness often of enormous difficulty. It is notable 
 enough, surely, how a Theorem or Spiritual Repre- 
 sentation, 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 con- 
 tinue; but Luther's Protestantism must needs fol- 
 low? 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 desires somewhat of his own. Abso- 
 lutely without originality there is no man. No man 
 whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his 
 grandfather believed; he enlarges somewhat, by 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PPaEST. 147 
 
 fresh discovery, his view of the Universe, and con- 
 sequently 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 grand- 
 father incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent 
 with some new thing he has discovered or observed. 
 j; It is the history of every man; and in the history 
 of Mankind we see it summed up into great histori- 
 cal 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 what- 
 soever in this world, — all Systems of Belief, and 
 Systems of Practice that spring from these. 
 
 If we add now the melancholy fact that when Be- 
 lief waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, 
 and errors, injustices, and miseries every where more 
 and more prevail, we shall see material enough for 
 revolution. At all turns, a man who will do faith- 
 fully, 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 misdone. Every such man is a daily 
 contributor to the inevitable dovvnfal. Whatsoever 
 work he does, dishonestly, with an eye to the out- 
 ward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new mi- 
 sery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till 
 they become insupportable: and are then violently 
 burst through, cleared off as by explosion. Dante's 
 
14S THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 sublime Catholicism, incredible now in theory, and 
 defaced still worse by faithless, doubting, and dis- 
 honest 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 Revo- 
 lution. 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 opi- 
 nions and arrangements only 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 ivas 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 condem- 
 nable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Ma- 
 hometans, 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 gene- 
 ration 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 
 
LECT IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 149 
 
 dead bodies, that we might march over and take the 
 place! rlt is an incredible hypothesis., 
 
 Such incredible hypotheses we have seen main- 
 tained 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 bod yjj 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; en- 
 listed, 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? |j All uniforms shall be goodj 
 so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions 
 of arms, the Arab turban and swift ci meter, Thor's 
 strong hammer smiting down Jdluns, shall be wel- 
 come. Luther's battle-voice, Dante's march-melo- 
 dy, all genuine things are with us, not against us. 
 We a^re all under one Captain, soldiers of the same 
 host. 1 — Let us now look a little at this Luther's fight- 
 ing; what kind of battle it was, and how he com- 
 ported 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 Ido- 
 latry will perhaps be in place here. One of Maho- 
 met's characteristics, which indeed belongs to all 
 13 
 
150 THE HERO AS PRIEST. ^ 
 
 Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Ido- 
 latry. It is the grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, 
 the worshipping of dead Idols as the Divinity, is a 
 thing they cannot away with, but must 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 other." And now in 
 this sense, one may ask, Is not all worship what- 
 soever 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 Godhood; 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, re- 
 ligious 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 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 151 
 
 hateful to Prophets? i 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 Caa- 
 bah 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: recog- 
 nition of a certain endless divine beauty and signifi- 
 cance 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 ho- 
 nestly full of it, the w T hole space of his dark narrow 
 mind illuminated thereby; in one word, let him en- 
 tirely 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. Con- 
 demnable Idolatry is insincere Idolatry. Doubt has 
 eaten out the heart of itr.'a human soul is seen cling- 
 ing spasmodically to an Ark of the Covenant, which 
 it half-feels now to have become a Phantasm.' This 
 
152 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 is one of the balefullest 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 hence- 
 forth of any morality whatsoever! the innermost mo- 
 ral soul is paralyzed 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 inextinguishable aversion. He 
 and it, all good and it, are at death-feud. Blame- 
 able 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 re- 
 ality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of 
 things." According as he loves, and venerates, arti- 
 culately 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 pro- 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 153 
 
 phet-vvork 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, reli- 
 gious or social, for mankind. One often hears it 
 said that Protestantism introduced a new era, radi- 
 cally different from any the world had ever seen be- 
 fore: the era of "private judgment," as they call it. 
 By this revolt against the Pope, every man became 
 his own Pope; and learned, among other things, that 
 he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-cap- 
 tain any morel;/ Whereby, is not spiritual union, all 
 hierarchy and subordination, among men, hence- 
 forth 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, 1 
 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 j the spiritual is the 
 beginning of the temporal: And now, sure enough, 
 the cry is every where for Liberty and Equality, In- 
 dependence 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 
 13* 
 
154 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 passed away for ever from the world. I should de- 
 spair 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 hatefullest 
 of things. But I find Protestantism, whatever anar- 
 chic democracy it have produced, to be the begin- 
 ning 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 pe- 
 culiar in the reformation; it was a return to Truth 
 and Reality in opposition to Falsehood and Sem- 
 blance, 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 h's; 
 ' he will reign and believe there, by the grace of God 
 alone! The sorriest sophistical Bellarmine, preach- 
 ing sightless faith and passive obedience, must first, 
 by some kind of conviction, have abdicated his right 
 to be convinced. His "private judgment" indicated 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 155 
 
 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 dis- 
 cernment that is in him, and has always so believed. 
 A false man, only struggling to "believe that he be- 
 lieves," will naturally manage it in some other way. 
 Protestantism said to this latter, Wo! and to the for- 
 mer, 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 judg- 
 ment, had "judged V — 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, iso- 
 lation, 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 makes 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 sym- 
 pathy 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 long run, 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 contro- 
 
156 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 versy: That it is not necessary a man should himself 
 have discovered the truth he is to believe in never so 
 sincerely. A Great Man, we said, was always sin- 
 cere, 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 ori- 
 ginality 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 sem- 
 blance, but on substance; every work issues in a re- 
 sult: 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- 
 subsislent, 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 
 ^believe 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 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 157 
 
 alone can love, with a right gratitude and genuine 
 loyalty of souljjthe Hero-Teacher who has delivered 
 him out of darkness into light, f) Is not such a one a 
 true Hero, and Serpent-queller; worthy of all reve- 
 rence! 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, ac- 
 cordingly, was not Luther himself reverenced as a 
 true Pope, or Spiritual Father, being verily such? 
 
 ■/- Napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of Sansculot- 
 tism, 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 Suf- 
 frages, Independence, and so forth, we will take, there- 
 fore, 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 behooved men to quit simulacra and return to fact; 
 cost what it might, that did behoove to be done. With 
 spurious Popes, and believers having no private judg- 
 ment, — 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 
 
158 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 level, — at n°-A/-angles to one another ! In all this 
 wild revolutionary work, from Protestantism down- 
 wards, 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 birth-place was Eisleben in Saxony; he 
 eame 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 ; per- 
 haps 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 compa- 
 rison? 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 Birlh- 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 159 
 
 hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen Hun- 
 dred 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 for ever 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 j'\that he was born poor, and brought up poor, 
 one of the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the 
 school-children 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 natter 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 wdiatever 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 
 Jotuns and Giant-monsters ! 
 
 Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may 
 fancy, was that death of his friend Alexis, by light- 
 ning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had struggled up 
 through boyhood, better and worse; displaying in 
 spite of all hinderances the largest intellect, eager to 
 learn : his father, judging doubtless that he might 
 
160 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 thunder-storm came 
 on; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's 
 hand. 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, King- 
 ships? 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 ser- 
 vice 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 his- 
 tory of Luther, his purer will now first decisively ut- 
 tering 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 eln frommer JtfCmch 
 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 earn- 
 est 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 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 161 
 
 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 stag- 
 gering 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 expe- 
 rience, 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 gradu- 
 ally got himself founded, as on the rock. No won- 
 der 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 im- 
 planted 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 natu- 
 ral 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 
 14 
 
162 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 °;ood 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 Lu- 
 ther with amazement. He had come as to the Sa- 
 cred City, throne of God's High-priest 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, \s 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 Lu- 
 ther 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 irrevc- 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 163 
 
 rently persons in authority. His clear task, as 1 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 High-priesthood did come athwart 
 him; afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, could not 
 get lived in honesty for it; he remonstrated, resist- 
 ed, 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. Per- 
 haps 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 at- 
 tained that, or lost it for ever! We will say nothing 
 at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of theories, of its 
 being some mean shopkeeper grudge, of the Augus- 
 tine Monk against the Dominican, that first kindled 
 the wrath of Luther, and produced the Protestant 
 Reformation. We will say to the people who main- 
 tain 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, other- 
 wise 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 any thing, — arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his 
 scandalous trade there. Luther's flock bought indul- 
 
164 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 gences; 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 fu- 
 tility 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 from 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 wri- 
 tings to be burnt by the hangman, and his body to 
 be sent bound to Rome — probably for a similar pur- 
 pose. 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 Coun- 
 cil, 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 
 out of this world; choked it in smoke and fire. That 
 was not well done ! 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 165 
 
 I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolt- 
 ing 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 in- 
 ability 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, 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 tenth of December, 1520, three years 
 after the beginning of the business, that Luther 
 •' with a great concourse of people," took this indig- 
 nant step of burning the Pope's fire-decree in the 
 market-place of Wittenberg. Wittenburg 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 nationsrf-Thc 
 quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at 
 length got more than it could bear.-f- Formulism, 
 Pagan Popism, 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 we 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 
 
 14* 
 
166 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 par- 
 don sins. Popeship, spiritual Fatherhood of God's 
 Church, is that a vain semblance, of cloth and 
 parchment? It is an awful act. God's Church is 
 not a semblance. Heaven and Hell are not sem- 
 blances. I stand on this, since you drive me to it. 
 Standing on this, 1, a poor German monk, am stronger 
 than you all. I stand solitary, friendless, one man, 
 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! — -jL, 
 
 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 civilization 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, Hans Luther, the poor miner'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 warn- 
 ings; he answered, "Were there as many Devils 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 167 
 
 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 house-tops, some of 
 them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to re- 
 cant: "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, paralyzed under a black spectral Nightmare 
 and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in 
 God and what not: "Free us; it rests with thee; 
 -f desert us not!'^ Luther did not desert us. His 
 speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its re- 
 spectful, wise and honest tone; submissive to what- 
 soever could lawfully claim submission, not submis- 
 sive 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 re- 
 cant it. How could he? " Confute me," he con- 
 cluded, " by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain, 
 just arguments: 1 cannot recant otherwise. {/For it 
 is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against con- 
 science./ /Here stand L| I can do no other: God assist 
 me!"4-lt is, as we say, the greatest monument in 
 the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, 
 England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast 
 work of these two centuries; French Revolution, Eu- 
 rope and its work every where at present; the germ 
 of it all lay there: had Luther in that moment done 
 other, it had all been otherwise! The European 
 
168 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 World was asking him : Am I to sink ever lower into 
 falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed 
 death; or, with whatever paroxysm, to cast the false- 
 hoods 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 Au- 
 geas'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 be- 
 come 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 unbelieveable. 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 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 169 
 
 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 behooved to be done. Union, an organization 
 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 any thing 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 bless- 
 ings of the New, let us not be unjust to the old. 
 The Old icas true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days 
 it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dis- 
 honesty, 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 in- 
 crease, 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; Popism is more 
 alive than it, will be alive after it! — Drowsy inani- 
 ties, 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 Litera- 
 ture and the French Revolution ; rather considerable 
 
170 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 last- 
 ing 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 
 ) r ou cannot tell how it is going: look in half an hour 
 where it is, — look in half a century where your Pope- 
 hood 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 appro- 
 priated 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 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 171 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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 mat- 
 ter 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 ol 
 men otherwise." Luther's clear deep force of judg- 
 ment, 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 tole- 
 rance: he distinguishes what is essential, and what 
 is not; the unessential may go as it will. A complaint 
 comes that such and such a Reformed Preacher "will 
 not preach without a cassock/' Well, answers Lu- 
 ther, 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 Peasant's War, shows a noble 
 strength, very different from spasmodic violence. 
 With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is 
 what: a strong just man speaks forth what is the 
 wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther's 
 
172 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 at- 
 traction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction 
 is still legible enough; Luther's merit in literary- 
 history is one 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 to write one. 1 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 Kin- 
 dred, 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 wri- 
 tings, this turns up; and a most small sneer has been 
 grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wart- 
 burg, where he sat translating the Bible, they still 
 show you a black spot on the wall; the strange me- 
 
LECT. IV. THE HE110 AS PRIEST. 1 
 
 morial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat trans- 
 lating 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 ink- 
 stand 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 sci- 
 entific 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. — Fear- 
 less enough! They spoke once about his not being 
 at Leipzig, as if Duke George had hindered him," 
 a great enemy of his. It was not for Duke George, 
 answered he: No; " If I had business at Leipzig, I 
 would go, though it rained Duke Georges for nine 
 days running." 
 
 At the same time, they err greatly who imagine 
 that this man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse dis- 
 obedient 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 
 15 
 
174 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 breathings of affection, soft as a child's or a mothers, 
 in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest, un- 
 adulterated with any cant; homely, rude in their 
 utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. 
 What, in fact, was all that down-pressed mood of 
 despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, 
 but the outcome of pre-eminent thoughtful gentle- 
 ness, 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 defi- 
 ance; all kindled into a heavenly blaze. 
 
 In Luther's Table-talk, a posthumous Book of anec- 
 dotes 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. PI is behaviour 
 at the death-bed of his little Daughter, so still, so great 
 and loving, is among the most affecting things. He 
 is resigned that his little Margaret 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 Margaret 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 
 Wartburg, in the middle of the night: The great 
 vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds sailing 
 through it, — dumb, gaunt, huge, — who supports all 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 175 
 
 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 pro- 
 duced it once again; the bread of man! — In the gar- 
 den at Wittenberg one evening at sunset, a little bird 
 has 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 trust- 
 fully to rest there as in its home: the Maker of it has 
 
 given it too a home! Neither are mirthful terms 
 
 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 Kra- 
 nach'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 unnameable melancholy, 
 the element of all gentle and fine affections; giving 
 
176 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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, Earnest- 
 ness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and vic- 
 tories, 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 loveable and precious men. 
 Great, not as a hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine 
 mountain, — so simple, honest, spontaneous, not set- 
 ting 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 val- 
 leys with flowers ! A right Spiritual Hero and Pro- 
 phet; 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 Reforma- 
 tion any where assumes, especially for us English, is 
 that of Puritanism. In Luther's own country, Pro- 
 testantism 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 skeptical contention: which 
 indeed has jangled more and more, down to Voltairism 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 177 
 
 i tself, through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onward 
 to French Revolution ones! But in our Island there 
 arose a Puritanism, which even got itself establish- 
 ed 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 no- 
 table 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 under- 
 stand that it was a genuine thing; for Nature has 
 adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say some- 
 times, 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 Hol- 
 land! 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 
 15* 
 
178 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 out of their own 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 Star-chamber hang- 
 men. 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 Neat's History of the Puritans 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 (the Prayer too is given,) 
 That God would have pity on his poor children, and 
 go with them into the 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 despica- 
 ble, 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 this sun at present! 
 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, dissen- 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 179 
 
 sions, massacreings; a people in the last state of rude- 
 ness 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 di- 
 vide 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 minis- 
 ters 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; ivhose 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 Re- 
 formation, 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 bea- 
 con 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 
 to 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. — Impos- 
 sible! say some. Possible ? Has it not been'm this 
 world, as a practised fact? Did Hero-worship fail 
 in Knox's case ? Or are we made of other clay now ? 
 Did the Westminister Confession of Faith add some 
 
ISO THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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, 
 1 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: 1 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 all call the " Gloj^ious Re- 
 volution," 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 Cromvvells, Knoxes, poor 
 Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, battling for very 
 life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suf- 
 fer, and fall, greatly censured, bcmired, — before a 
 beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step over 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 181 
 
 them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with uni- 
 versal 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 cor- 
 ner, like so many others; Scotland had not been de- 
 livered; and Knox had been without blame. He is 
 the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his coun- 
 try and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that 
 Scotland would forgive him for having been worth 
 to it any million "unblameable " 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 apologize for 
 Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two hun- 
 dred and fifty years or more, what men say of him. 
 But we, having got above all those details of his bat- 
 tle, 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 Pro ? 
 phet to his Nation was not of his seeking; Knox 
 had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he be- 
 came conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents; 
 had got a college education; became a Priest; adopt- 
 ed the Reformation, and seemed well content to guide 
 his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly in 
 
1S2 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 truding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gen- 
 tlemen's families; preaching when any body of per- 
 sons 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 ca- 
 pable 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 baptized withal. He 
 "burst into tears." 
 
 Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is 
 sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not 
 denied any where 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 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 183 
 
 can he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River 
 Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle 
 of St. Andrews 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 reve- 
 rence. Mother? Mother of God? said Knox, when 
 the turn came to him: This is no mother of God: 
 this is "apented bredd," — & piece of wood, I tell you, 
 with paint on it. She is fitter for swimming, 1 think, 
 than for being worshipped, added Knox: and flung 
 the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jest- 
 ing 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. Kow 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 since- 
 rity 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 
 
1S4 THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid 
 narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, stern re- 
 buke 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 read- 
 ing 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 er- 
 rand. 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 un- 
 fortunately 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 in- 
 triguing ambitious Guises, and the Cause of God 
 trampled under loot of Falsehoods, Formulas and the 
 Devil's Cause, had no method of making himself 
 agreeable! '"Better that women weep," said Mor- 
 ton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." 
 Knox was the constitutional opposition-party in Scot- 
 land: the Nobles of the country, called by their sta- 
 tion 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! 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 185 
 
 Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, 
 among her other qualities: " Who are you," said she 
 once, il that presume to school the nobles and sove- 
 reign of this realm?" — "Madam, a subject born 
 within the same," answered he. Reasonably an- 
 swered ! 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 tole- 
 rate the inessential; 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 
 do not tolerate Falsehoods, Iniquities, when they 
 fasten on us; we say to them, Thou art false and 
 unjust! We are here to extinguish Falsehoods in 
 some wise way? f I will not quarrel so much with the 
 vvay; 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 such 
 like, 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 na- 
 ture he decidedly had not. Kind honest affections 
 dwelt 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 Sovereign- 
 ty in that wild realm, he who was only "a subject 
 born within the same:" this of itself will prove to us 
 16 
 
18G THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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 cathe- 
 drals 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 fea- 
 ture of his life that he was forced to dwell. so much 
 in that. Every such man is the born enemy of Dis- 
 order; hates to be in it: but what then? Smooth 
 Falsehood is not Order; it is the general sum-total of 
 Disorder. '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 com- 
 bination with his other qualities. He has a true eye 
 for the ridiculous. His History, with its rough ear- 
 nestness, is curiously enlivened with this. When the 
 two Prelates, entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel 
 kbout 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 every way! 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 sa}^, 
 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 
 had his pipe of Bordeaux too, we find, in that old 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 1S7 
 
 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 fana- 
 tic. 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 con- 
 cern 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; wrest- 
 ling with Popes and Principalities; in defeat, con- 
 tention, 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 mo- 
 ment, 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, 
 
1SS THE HERO AS PRIEST. 
 
 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, diplomatizing or whatever else they might 
 be doing, should walk according to the Gospel of 
 Christ, and understand that this was their Law, su- 
 preme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a 
 thing realized; 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, educa- 
 tion, schools, worship; — and the Regent Murray had 
 to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is a 
 devout imagination V 9 This was Knox's scheme of 
 right and truth; this he zealously endeavoured after, 
 to realize it. If we think his scheme of truth was too 
 narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he could 
 not realize it; that it remained, after two centuries 
 of effort, unrealizable, and is a " devout imagination" 
 still. But how shall we blame him for struggling to 
 realize it? Theocracy, Government of God, is pre- 
 cisely 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, our God's law, reign su- 
 preme among men, this is the Heavenly Idea (well- 
 named in Knox's time, and nameable in all times, a 
 revealed " Will of God,") towards which the Reform- 
 er will insist that all be more and more approximated. 
 
LECT. IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. 189 
 
 All true Reformers, as 1 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 them- 
 selves 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 ! 
 
 16 
 
LECTURE V. 
 
 [Tuesday, 19th May, 1840.] 
 
 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. — JOHNSON, ROUS- 
 SEAU, BURNS. 
 
 Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of 
 Heroism that belong to the old ages, make their ap- 
 pearance 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 
 cf Letters, again, of which class we are to speak to- 
 day, 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 re- 
 spects, a very singular phenomenon. 
 
 He is new, 1 say; he has hardly lasted above a 
 century in the world yet. Never, till about a hun- 
 dred years ago, was there seen any figure of a Great 
 Soul living apart in that anomalous manner; endea- 
 vouring 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 market-place; 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; 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 191 
 
 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 him- 
 self 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 ruc|,e 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 nondescript, extant in 
 the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins 
 and applauses thrown him, that he might live there- 
 by; 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 mate- 
 rial, 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 teaches, 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 possi- 
 ble 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 
 
192 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 function for us which is ever honourable, ever the 
 highest; and was once well known to be the highest. 
 lie is uttering forth, in such way as he has, the in- 
 spired 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, un- 
 seen to most, under the temporary, Trivial: his be- 
 ing 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 ever- 
 lasting heart of Nature herself: all men's life is, — but 
 the weak many know it not, 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 He- 
 roes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world 
 to do. 
 
 Fichte the German Philosopher delivered, some 
 forty years ago at Jena, 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 Phi- 
 losophy, 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 appear- 
 ance; that under all there lies, as the essence of 
 them, what he calls the " Divine Idea of the world;" 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 193 
 
 this is the Reality which " lies at the bottom of all 
 Appearance. 7 ' 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 
 any thing divine under them. 
 
 But the Man of Letters is sent hither especially 
 that he may discern for himself, and make manifest 
 to us, this same Divine Idea: in every new genera- 
 tion 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 sacred- 
 ness : 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 dis- 
 
194 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 criminates 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, Stumper" 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. 
 
 In this point of view, I consider that, for the last 
 hundred years by far the notablest of all Literary Men 
 is Fichte's countryman Goethe. To that man too, 
 in a strange way, there was given what we may call 
 a life in the Divine Idea of the World; vision of the 
 inward divine mystery: and strangely, out of his 
 Books, the world rises imaged once more as godlike, 
 the workmanship and temple of a God. Illuminated 
 all, not in fierce impure fire-splendour as of Mahomet, 
 but in mild celestial radiance; — really a prophecy 
 in these most unprophetic times; to my mind, by 
 far the greatest, though one of the quietest, among 
 all the great things that have come to pass in them! 
 Our chosen specimen of the Hero as Literary Man 
 would be this Goethe. And it were a very pleasant 
 plan for me here, to discourse of his heroism : for I 
 consider him to be a true Hero; heroic in what he 
 said and did, and perhaps still more heroic in what 
 he did not say and did not do; to me a noble spec- 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 195 
 
 tacle: a great heroic ancient man, speaking and 
 keeping silence as an ancient Hero, in the guise of 
 a most modern, high-bred, high-cultivated Man of 
 Letters! We have had no such spectacle; no man 
 capable of affording such, for the last hundred and 
 fifty years. But at present, such is the general state 
 of knowledge about Goethe, it were worse than use- 
 less to attempt speaking of him in this case. Speak 
 as I might, Goethe, to a great majority of you, 
 would remain problematic, vague; no impression but 
 a false one could be realized. Him we must leave 
 to future times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, three 
 great figures from a prior time, from a far inferior 
 state of circumstance, will suit us better here. Three 
 men of the Eighteenth Century; the conditions of 
 their life far more resemble what those of ours still are 
 in England, than what Goethe's in Germany were. 
 Alas, these men did not conquer like him; they 
 fought bravely, and fell. They were not heroic 
 bringers of the light, but heroic seekers of it. They 
 lived under galling conditions; struggling as under 
 mountains of impediment, and could not unfold 
 themselves into clearness, victorious interpretation 
 of that " Divine Idea." It is rather the Tombs of three 
 Literary Heroes that I have to show you. These 
 are the monumental heaps, under which three 
 spiritual giants lie buried. Very mournful, but also 
 great and full of interest for us. We will linger by 
 them for a while. 
 
 Complaint is often made, in these times, of what 
 we call the disorganized condition of society; how 
 ill many arranged forces of society fulfil their work; 
 how many powerful forces are seen working in a 
 
196 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. 
 It is too just a complaint, as we all know. But 
 perhaps if we look at this of Books and the Writers 
 of Books, we shall find here, as it were, the summary 
 of all other disorganization: — a sort of heart, from 
 which and to which all other confusion circulates in 
 the world ! Considering what Book-writers do in the 
 world, and what the world does with Book-writers, I 
 should say, It is the most anomalous thing the world 
 at present has to show. — We should get into a sea 
 far beyond sounding, did we attempt to give account 
 of this: but we must glance at it for the sake of our 
 subject. The worst element in the life of these three 
 Literary Heroes was, that they found their business 
 and position such a chaos. On the beaten road 
 there is tolerable travelling; but it is sore work, and 
 many have to perish, fashioning a path through the 
 impassable! 
 
 Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance 
 lay in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, 
 made endowments, regulations; every where in the 
 civilized world there is a Pulpit, environed with all 
 manner of complex dignified appurtenances and fur- 
 therances, that therefrom a man with the tongue 
 may, to best advantage, address his fellow-men. 
 They felt that this was the most important thing; 
 that without this there was no good thing. It is a 
 right pious work that of theirs ; beautiful to behold! 
 But now with the art of Writing, with the art of 
 Printing, a total change has come over that busi- 
 ness. The Writer of a Book, is not he a preacher 
 preaching, not to this parish or that, on this day or 
 that, but to all men in all times and places? Surely 
 it is of the last importance that he do his work right. 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 197 
 
 whoever do it wrong; — that the eye report not falsely, 
 for then all the other members are astray ! Well, 
 how he may do his work, whether he do it right or 
 wrong, or do it all, is a point which no man in the 
 world has taken the pains to think of. To a certain 
 shop-keeper, trying to get some money for his books, 
 if lucky, he is of some importance ; to no other man 
 of any. Whence he came, whither he is bound, by 
 what ways he arrived, by what he might be furthered 
 on his course, no one asks. j He is an accident in 
 society. He wanders like a wild Ishmaelite, in a 
 world of which he is as the spiritual light, either the 
 guidance or the misguidance ! 
 
 Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous 
 of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were 
 the first form of the work of a Hero; Books, written 
 words, are still miraculous Runes, the latest form! 
 In Books lies the soul of the whole Past time; the 
 articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body 
 and material substance of it has altogether vanished 
 like a dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and 
 arsenals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined, — 
 they are precious, great: but what do they become? 
 Agamemnon, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, 
 and their Greece; all is gone now to some ruined 
 fragments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but 
 the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, 
 still very literally lives; can be called up again into 
 life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All 
 that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it 
 is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of 
 Books. They are the chosen possession of men. 
 
 Do not Books still accomplish miracles, as Runes 
 were fabled to do ? They persuade men. Not the 
 17 
 
198 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 wretcheclest circulating-library novel, which foolish 
 girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help 
 to regulate the actual practical weddings and house- 
 holds of those foolish girls. So "Celia" felt, so " Clif- 
 ford " acted: the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped 
 into those young brains, comes out as a solid Prac- 
 tice one day <* Consider whether any Rune in the 
 wildest imagination of Mythologist ever did such 
 wonders as, on the actual firm Earth, some Books have 
 done! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the 
 heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book, 
 — the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tend- 
 ing his Midianitish herds, four thousand years ago in 
 the wilderness of Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, 
 yet nothing is truer. With the art of Writing, of 
 which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and com- 
 paratively insignificant corollary, the true reign of 
 miracles for mankind commenced. It related, with a 
 wondrous new contiguity and perpetual closeness, the 
 Past and Distant with the Present in time and place; 
 all times and all places with this our actual Here and 
 Now. All things were altered for men; all modes of 
 important work of men : teaching, preaching, govern- 
 ing, and all else. 
 
 To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities 
 are a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. 
 Their existence too is modified, to the very basis of 
 it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose 
 while there were yet no Books procurable; while a 
 man, for a single Book, had to give an estate of land. 
 That, in those circumstances, when a man had some 
 knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gather- 
 ing the learners round him, face to face, was a neces- 
 sity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 199 
 
 knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, 
 as many as thirty thousand, went to hear Abelard, and 
 that metaphysical theology of his. < And now for any 
 other teacher who had also something of his own to 
 teach, there was a great convenience opened : so many 
 thousands eager to learn were already assembled 
 yonder; of all places the best place for him was that. 
 For any third teacher it was better still; and grew 
 ever the better, the more teachers there came. It 
 only needed now that the King took notice of this 
 new phenomenon; combined or agglomerated the 
 various schools into one school; gave it edifices, pri- 
 vileges, encouragements, and named it Universitas, 
 or School of all sciences: the University of Paris in 
 its essential characters was there. The model of all 
 subsequent Universities; which down even to these 
 days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found 
 themselves. Such, I conceive, was the origin of 
 Universities. 
 
 It is clear, however, that with this simple circum- 
 stance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions 
 of the business from top to bottom were changed. 
 Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Uni- 
 versities, or superseded them! The teacher needed 
 not now to gather men personally round him, that he 
 might speak to them what he knew: print it in a 
 Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had 
 it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to 
 learn it! — Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in 
 speech; even writers of Books may still, in some 
 circumstances, find it convenient to speak also, — 
 Witness our present meeting here! There is, one 
 would say, and must ever remain while man has a 
 tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for 
 
200 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this 
 must remain; to Universities among others. But the 
 limits of the two have no where yet been pointed out, 
 ascertained; much less put in practice: the Univer- 
 sity which would completely take in that great new 
 fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on 
 a clear footing for the Nineteenth Century, as the 
 Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come 
 into existence. If we think of it, all that a Univer- 
 sity or final highest School can do for us, is still but 
 what the first School began doing, — teach us to read. 
 We learn to read, in various languages, in various 
 sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all 
 manner of Books. But the place where we are to get 
 knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books 
 themselves ! It depends on what we read, after all 
 manner of Professors have done their best for us. The 
 true University of these days is a collection of Books. 
 But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 
 changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the intro- 
 duction of Books. The Church is the working recog- 
 nised Union of ourPriestsorProphets,orthose whoby 
 wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there was 
 no Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing, 
 or Printing, the preaching of the voice was the natu- 
 ral sole method of performing this. But now with 
 Books! — He that can write a true Book, to persuade 
 England, is not he the Bishop and Archbishop, the 
 Primate of England and of all England ? I many 
 a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, 
 Poems, Books, these are the real working effective 
 Church of a modern country. Nay, not only our 
 preaching, but even our worship, is not it too ac- 
 complished by means of Printed Books? The noble 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 201 
 
 sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in 
 melodious words, which brings melody into our hearts^ 
 — is not this essentially, if we will understand it, of 
 the nature of worship? There are many, in all 
 countries, who, in this confused time, have no other 
 method of worship. He who, in any way, shows us 
 better than we knew before that a lily of the fields 
 is beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence 
 of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the handwriting, 
 made visible there, of the great Maker of the Uni- 
 verse? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, 
 a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. 
 How much more he who sings, who says, or in any 
 way brings home to our heart the noble doings, feel- 
 ings, darings and endurances of a brother man! He 
 has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal from 
 the altar. Perhaps there is no worship more authen- 
 tic. Literature, so far as it is Literature, is an "apo- 
 calypse of Nature," a revealing of the " open secret." 
 It may well enough be named, in Fichte's style, a 
 "continuous revelation" of the Godlike in the Ter- 
 restrial and Common. The Godlike does ever, in 
 very truth, endure there; is brought out, now in this 
 dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clear- 
 ness: all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, con- 
 sciously, or unconsciously, doing so.- The dark storm- 
 ful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, 
 may have touches of it;' nay, the withered mockery 
 of a French skeptic, — his mockery of the False, a 
 love and worship of the True. How much more the 
 sphere-harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the 
 cathedral music of a Milton; the humble genuine 
 lark-notes of a Burns, — skylark, starting from the 
 humble furrow, far overhead in the blue depths, 
 17* 
 
202 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 and singing to us so genuinely there ! l T Fragments 
 of a real "Church Liturgy " and "body of Homilies,'' 
 strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be 
 found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed 
 Speech we loosely call Literature ! Books are our 
 Church too. 
 
 Or turning now to the Government of men. Witen- 
 agemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The 
 affairs of the nation were there deliberated and de- 
 cided; what we were to do as a nation. But does 
 not, though the name Parliament subsists, the par- 
 liamentary debate go on now, every where and at 
 all times, in a far more comprehensive way, out of 
 Parliament altogether? Burke said there were Three 
 Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Galle- 
 ry yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important 
 far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a 
 witty saying; it is a literal fact, — very momentous 
 to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament 
 too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writ- 
 ing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent 
 Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings 
 Printing: brings universal every-day extempore 
 Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, 
 speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, 
 a branch of government, with inalienable weight in 
 law making, in all acts of authority. It matters not 
 what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the 
 requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others 
 will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. 
 The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the 
 nation: Democracy is virtually there. Add only 
 that whatsoever power exists will have itself by and 
 by organized; working secretly under bandages, ob- 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 203 
 
 scurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get 
 to work free, unencumbered, visible to all; Demo- 
 cracy virtually extant will insist on becoming pal- 
 pably extant. 
 
 On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion 
 that, of the things which man can do or make 
 here below, by far the most momentous, won- 
 derful and worthy are the things we call books! 
 Those poor bits of rag paper with black ink on them; 
 — from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew 
 Book, what have they not done, what are they not 
 doing! — For indeed, whatever be the outward form 
 of the thing, (bits of paper, as we say, and black 
 ink,) is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of 
 man's faculty that produces a Book? It is the 
 Thought of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by 
 which man works all things whatsoever.! All that 
 he does, and brings to pass, is the vesture of a Thought. 
 This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam- 
 engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic 
 and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions 
 of Thoughts made into One; — a huge immeasurable 
 Spirit of a Thought, imbodied in brick, in iron, 
 smoke dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, 
 Katharine Docks, and the rest of it ! Not a brick 
 was made but some man had to think of the making 
 of that brick. The thing we called "bits of paper 
 with traces of black ink," is the purest imbodiment 
 a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all 
 ways, the activest and noblest. 
 
 All this, of the importance and supreme impor- 
 tance of the Man of Letters in modern Society, and 
 how the press is to such a degree superseding the 
 Pulpit, the Senate, the Senatus Jlcademicus and much 
 
204 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 else, has been admitted for a good while; and recog- 
 nised often enough, in late times, with a sort of sen- 
 timental triumph and wonderment. It seems to me, 
 the Sentimental by and by will have to give place 
 to the Practical. If Men of Letters are so incalcu- 
 lably influential, actually performing such work for 
 us from age to age, and even from day to day, then 
 I think we may conclude that Men of Letters will 
 not always wander like unrecognised unregulated 
 lshmaelites among us! Whatsoever thing, as I said 
 above, has virtual unnoticed power will cast off its 
 wrappages, bandages, and step forth one day with 
 palpably articulated, universally visible power.* 
 That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, 
 of a function which is done by quite another; there 
 can be no profit in this; this is not right, it is wrong. 
 And yet, alas, the making of it right, — what a busi- 
 ness, for long times to come! Sure enough, this that 
 we call Organization of the Literary Guild is still a 
 great way off, encumbered with all manner of com- 
 plexities. If you asked me what were the best pos- 
 sible organization for the Men of Letters in modern 
 society; the arrangement, of furtherance and regu- 
 lation, grounded the most accurately on the actual 
 facts of their position and of the world's position, 
 — I should beg to say that the problem far exceed- 
 ed my faculty! It is not one man's faculty; it is 
 that of many successive men turned earnestly upon 
 it, that will bring out even an approximate solution. 
 What the best arrangement were, none of us could 
 say. But if you ask, Which is the worst? I an- 
 swer: This which we now have, that Chaos should 
 sit umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or 
 any good one, there is yet a long way. 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 205 
 
 One remark I must not omit, That royal or parlia- 
 mentary grants of money are by no means the chief 
 thing wanted ! To give our Men of Letters stipends, 
 endowments, and all furtherance of cash, will do 
 little towards the business. On the whole, one is 
 weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. 
 I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil 
 to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men 
 poor,— to show whether they are genuine or not! 
 Mendicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to 
 beg, were instituted in the Christian Church: a most 
 natural and even necessary development of the 
 spirit of Christianity. It was itself founded on Po- 
 verty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every 
 species of worldly Distress and Degradation.// We 
 may say that he who has not known those things, 
 and learned from them the priceless lessons they 
 have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of 
 schooling.// To beg and go barefoot, in coarse woollen 
 cloak with a rope round your loins, and be despised 
 of all the world, was no beautiful business; — nor an 
 honourable one in any eye, till the nobleness of those 
 who did so had made it honoured of some! Beg- 
 ging is not in our course at the present time : but 
 for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not 
 perhaps the better for being poor? It is needful for 
 him, at all rates to know that outward profit, that 
 success of any kind is not the goal he has to aim at. 
 Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egotism of all sorts, are 
 bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, 
 to be cast out of his heart, — to be, with whatever 
 pangs, torn out of it, cast forth from it, as a thing 
 worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made out 
 even less than Burns, poor and Plebeian: Who knows 
 
206 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 but in that same "best possible organization " as yet 
 far off, Poverty may still enter as an important ele- 
 ment? What if our Men of Letters, men setting up 
 to be Spiritual Heroes, were still then, as they now 
 are, a kind of " involuntary monastic order;" bound 
 still to this same ugly poverty, — till they had tried 
 what was in it too, till they had learned to make it, 
 too, do for them ! Money, in truth, can do much, but 
 it cannot do all. We must know the province of 
 it, and confine it there; and even spurn it back, when 
 it wishes to get farther. 
 
 Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper 
 season for them, the fit assigner of them, all settled, 
 how is the Burns to be recognised that merits these; 
 He must pass through the ordeal and prove himself, 
 This ordeal; this wild welter of a chaos which is 
 called Literary life: this too is a kind of ordeal! 
 There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from 
 the lower classes of society, toward the upper regions 
 and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong 
 men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere 
 than there. The manifold inextricably complex, 
 universal struggle of these constitutes, and must 
 constitute, what is called the progress of society. 
 For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. 
 How to regulate that struggle? There is the whole 
 question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind 
 Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling 
 the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal 
 Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed 
 to the yoke of Printer Cave, your Burns dying bro- 
 ken-hearted as a Gauger, your Rousseau driven into 
 mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 207 
 
 his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the 
 tvorst regulation. The best, alas, is far from us! 
 
 And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; 
 advancing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centu- 
 ries: this is a prophecy one can risk. For so soon 
 as men get to discern the importance of a thing, 
 they do infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, 
 forwarding it; and rest not till, in some approximate 
 degree, they have accomplished that. I say, of all 
 Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Classes at pre- 
 sent extant in the world, there is no class compara- 
 ble for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers 
 of Books. This is a fact which he who runs may 
 read, — and draw inferences from. "Literature will 
 take care of itself," answered Mr. Pitt, when applied 
 to for some help for Burns. " Yes/' answers Mr. 
 Southey, "it will take care of itself; and of yon too, 
 if you do not look to it!" 
 
 The result to individual Men of Letters is not the 
 momentous one; they are but individuals, an infinite- 
 simal fraction of the great body; they can struggle 
 on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. 
 But it deeply concerns the whole society, whether 
 it will set its light on high places, to walk thereby; 
 or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of 
 wild waste (not without conflagration,) as hereto- 
 fore! Light is the one thing wanted for the world. 
 Put wisdom in the head of the world, it will fight its 
 battle victoriously, and be the best world man can 
 make it. I called this anomaly of a disorganic 
 Literary Class the heart of all other anomalies, at 
 once product and parent; some good arrangement 
 for that would be as the punctum saliens of a new 
 vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, in 
 
208 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 some European countries, in France, in Prussia, one 
 traces some beginnings of an arrangement for the 
 Literary Class; indicating the gradual possibility of 
 such. I believe that it is possible; that it will have 
 to be possible. 
 
 By far the- most interesting fact I hear about the 
 Chinese is one of which we cannot arrive at clear- 
 ness, but which excites endless curiosity even in the 
 dim state: this, namely, that they do attempt to make 
 their Men of letters their Governors! It would be 
 rash to say, one understood how this was done, or 
 with what degree of success it was done. All such 
 things must be very unsuccessful; yet a small degree 
 of success is precious ; the very attempt how precious ! 
 There does seem to be, all over China, a more or 
 less active search every where to discover the men of 
 talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools 
 there are for every one : a foolish sort of training, yet 
 still a sort. The youths who distinguish themselves 
 in the lower school are promoted into favourable 
 stations in the higher, that they may still more dis- 
 tinguish themselves, — forward and forward: it ap- 
 pears to be out of these that the Official Persons, and 
 incipient Governors, are taken. These are they 
 whom they try first, whether they can govern or not. 
 And surely with the best hope; for they are the men 
 that have already shown intellect. Try them, they 
 have not governed or administered as yet; perhaps 
 they cannot; but there is no doubt they have some 
 understanding, — without whicli no man can!- Nei- 
 ther is Understanding a tool, as we are too apt to 
 figure; "it is a hand which can handle any tool." 
 Try these men: they are of all others the best worth 
 trying. — Surely there is no kind of government. 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 209 
 
 constitution, revolution, social apparatus or arrange- 
 ment, that I know of in this world, so promising to 
 one's scientific curiosity as this. -The man of intel- 
 lect at the top of affairs: this is the aim of all consti- 
 tutions and revolutions, if they have any aim. For the 
 man of true intellect, as I assert and believe always, is 
 the noble-hearted man withal, the true, just, humane 
 and valiant man. Get him for governor, all is got; 
 fail to get him, though you had Constitutions plenti- 
 ful as blackberries, an'd a Parliament in every vil- 
 lage, there is nothing yet got! — 
 
 These things look, strange, truly; and are not such 
 as we commonly speculate upon. But we are fallen 
 into strange times; these things will require to be 
 speculated upon ; to be rendered practicable, to be 
 in some way put in practice; These, and many 
 others. On all hands of us, there is the announce- 
 ment, audible enough, that the old Empire of Rou- 
 tine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, 
 is no reason for its continuing to be. The things 
 which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen 
 into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in 
 every society of our Europe, are no longer capable 
 of living at all by the things which have been* 
 When millions of men can no longer by their utmost 
 exertion gain food for themselves, and " the third 
 man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third- 
 rate potatoes," the things which have been must de- 
 cidedly prepare to alter themselves! — I will now 
 quit this of the organization of Men of Letters. 
 
 Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those Lite- 
 rary Heroes of ours was not the want of organization 
 for men of Letters, but a far deeper one; out of 
 
 18 
 
210 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the 
 Literary Men, and for all men, as from their fountain, 
 take rise. That our Hero as Man of Letters had to 
 travel without high-way, companionless, through an 
 inorganic chaos, — and to leave his own life and fa- 
 culty lying there, as a partial contribution towards 
 pushing some high-way through it : this, had not his 
 faculty itself been so perverted and paralyzed, he 
 might have put up with, might have considered to 
 be but the common lot of Heroes. His fatal misery 
 was the spiritual paralysis, so we may name it, of the 
 age in which his life lay; whereby his life too, do 
 what he might, was half-paralyzed ! The Eighteenth 
 was a Skeptical Century; in which little word there 
 is a whole Pandora's Box of miseries. Skepticism 
 means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral 
 Doubt; all sorts of z/zfidelity, insincerity, spiritual 
 paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could 
 specify since the world began, was a life of Heroism 
 more difficult for a man. That was not an age of 
 Faith, — an age of Heroes! The very possibility of 
 Heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in 
 the minds of all. Heroism was gone for ever; Trivi- 
 ality, Formalism and Common-place were come for 
 ever. The "age of miracle" had been, or perhaps 
 had not been; but it was not any longer. An effete 
 world; wherein wonder, Greatness, Godhood could 
 not now dwell; — in one word, a Godless world ! 
 
 How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in 
 this time, — compared not with the Christian Shak- 
 speares and Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skalds, 
 with any species of believing men. The living Tree 
 Igdrasil, with the melodious prophetic waving of its 
 world-wide boughs, deep rooted as Hela, has died 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 211 
 
 out into the clanking of a world-MACHiNE. " Tree " 
 and " machine :" contrast these two things. I, for 
 my share, declare the world to be no Machine; it 
 does not go by wheels and pinions at all! 
 
 The old Norse Heathen had a truer notion of God's 
 world than these poor Machine Skeptics: the old 
 Heathen Norse were sincere men. But for these poor 
 Skeptics there was no sincerity, no truth. Half truth 
 and hearsay was called truth. Truth, for most men, 
 meant plausibility; to be measured by the number 
 of votes you could get. They had lost any notion 
 that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. 
 How many Plausibilities asking, with unaffected sur- 
 prise and the air of offended virtue, What! am not I 
 sincere? Spiritual Paralysis, 1 say, nothing left but 
 a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that cen- 
 tury. For the common man, unless happily he stood 
 below his century and belonged to another prior one, 
 it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay 
 buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences: 
 To the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and 
 confusion was it possible to work himself half loose; 
 and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical 
 way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero! 
 
 Skepticism is the name we give to all this ; as the 
 chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Con- 
 cerning which so much were to be said ! It would 
 take many Discourses, not a small fraction of one Dis- 
 course, to state what one feels about that Eighteenth 
 Century and its ways. As indeed this, and the like 
 of this, which we now call Skepticism, is precisely 
 the black malady and life-foe, against which all 
 teaching and discoursing since man's life began has 
 directed itself ; the battle of Belief against Unbelief 
 
212 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 is the never-ending battle! Neither is it in the way 
 of crimination that one would wish to speak. Skep- 
 ticism, for that century, we must consider as the decay 
 of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for 
 new, better and wilder ways, — an inevitable thing. 
 We will not blame men for it; we will lament their 
 hard fate. We will understand that destruction of 
 old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; 
 that Skepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see 
 it, is not an end, but a beginning. 
 
 The other day speaking, without prior purpose that 
 way, of Bentham's theory of man and man's life, I 
 chanced to call it a more beggarly one than Maho- 
 met's. I am bound to say, now when it is once 
 uttered, that such is my deliberate opinion. Not that 
 one would mean offence against the man Jeremy 
 Bentham, or those who respect and believe him. 
 Bentham himself, and even the creed of Bentham, 
 seems to me comparatively worthy of praise. It is 
 a determinate being what all the world, in a cowardly 
 half-and-half manner, was tending to be. Let us 
 have the crisis; we shall either have death or the 
 cure: I call this gross, steam-engine Utilitarianism 
 an approach towards new Faith. It was a laying 
 down of cant; a saying to oneself: "Well then, this 
 world is a dead iron machine, the God of it Gravita- 
 tion and selfish Hunger; let us see what, by check- 
 ing and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and 
 pinion, can be made of it!" Benthamism has some- 
 thing complete, manful, in such fearless committal 
 of itself to what it finds true; you may call it Heroic, 
 though a Heroism with its eyes put out! It is the 
 calumniating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what 
 lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man's whole 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 213 
 
 existence in that Eighteenth Century. It seems to 
 me, all deniers of Godhood, and all lip-believers of 
 it, are bound to be Benthamites, if they have courage 
 and honesty. Benthamism is an eyeless Heroism: 
 the Human species, like a hapless blinded Samson 
 grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps convulsively 
 the pillars of its Mill; brings huge ruin down, but 
 ultimately deliverance withal. Of Bentham I meant 
 to say no harm. 
 
 But this I do say, and would wish all men to know 
 and lay to heart, that he who discerns nothing but 
 Mechanism in the Universe, has in the fatalest way 
 missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That 
 all Godhood should vanish out of men's conception 
 of this Universe seems to me precisely the most brutal 
 error, — I will not disparage Heathenism by calling it 
 a Heathen error, — that men could fall into. It is not 
 true; it is false at the very heart of it. A man who 
 thinks so will think wrong about all things in the 
 world; this original sin will vitiate all other conclu- 
 sions he can form. One might call it the most lamen- 
 table of Delusions, — not forgetting Witchcraft itself! 
 Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil; but 
 this worships a dead iron devil; no God, not even a 
 Devil! — Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops 
 thereby out of life. There remains every where in 
 life a despicable caput mortuum; the mechanical 
 hull, all soul fled out of it. How can a man act 
 heroically? The " Doctrine of Motives " will teach 
 him that it is, under more or less disguise, nothing 
 but a wretched love of Pleasure, fear of Pain; that 
 Hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual 
 it may be, is the ultimate fact of man's life: Athe- 
 ism, in brief;— which does indeed frightfully punish 
 18* 
 
214 THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 
 
 itself. The man, I say, is become spiritually a pa- 
 ralytic man; this godlike Universe a dead mechanical 
 Steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, ba- 
 lances, and I know not what; wherein, as in the 
 detestable belly of some Phalaris' Bull of his own con- 
 triving, he the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying !-^ 
 Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man's 
 mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process that 
 of getting to believe; — indescribable, as all vital acts 
 are. We have our mind given us, not that it may 
 cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, 
 give us clear belief and understanding about some- 
 thing, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, 
 truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush 
 out, clutch up the first thing we find, and straightway 
 believe that! All manner of doubt, inquiry, o-xe-j/? 
 as it is named; about all manner of objects, dwells 
 in every reasonable mind, flit is the mystic working 
 of the mind, on the object it is getting to know and 
 believe/ Belief comes out of all this, above ground, 
 like the tree from its hidden roots. But now if, even 
 on common things, we require that a man keep his 
 doubts silent, and not babble of them till they in some 
 measure become affirmations or denials; how much 
 more in regard to the highest things, impossible to 
 speak of in words at all! That a man parade his 
 doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic 
 (which means at best only the manner of telling us 
 your thought, belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the 
 triumph and true work of what intellect he has: alas, 
 this is as if you should overturn the tree, and instead 
 of green boughs, leaves and fruits, show us ugly 
 taloned roots turned up into the air, — and no growth, 
 only death and misery going on! 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 215 
 
 For the Skepticism, as I said, is not intellectual 
 only; it is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease 
 of the whole soul. A man lives by believing some- 
 thing; not by debating and arguing about many 
 things. A sad case for him when all that he can 
 manage to believe is something he can button in his 
 pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and di- 
 gest! Lower than that he will not get. We call 
 those ages in which he gets so low the mournfulest, 
 sickest and meanest of all ages. The world's heart 
 is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole? 
 Genuine Acting ceases in all departments of the 
 world's works; dexterous Similitude of Actingbegins. 
 The world's wages are pocketed, the world's work is 
 not done. Heroes have gone out; Quacks have come 
 in. Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the 
 Roman world, which also was a time of skepticism, 
 simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with 
 Quacks as that Eighteenth! Consider them, with 
 their tumid sentimental vapouring about virtue, bene- 
 volence, — the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro 
 at the head of them ! Few men were without quack- 
 ery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient 
 and amalgam for truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham 
 himself, comes down to the House, all wrapt, and ban- 
 daged; he "has crawled out in great bodily suffer- 
 ing," and so on; — forgets, says Walpole, that he is 
 acting the sick man; in the fire of debate, snatches 
 his arm from the sling and oratorically swings and 
 brandishes it! Chatham himself lives the strangest 
 mimetic life, half-hero, half-quack, all along. For 
 indeed the world is full of dupes; and you have to 
 gain the icorld's suffrage! How the duties of the 
 world will be done in that case, what quantities of 
 
216 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 error, which means failure, which means sorrow and 
 misery, to some and to many, will gradually accu- 
 mulate in all provinces of the world's business, we 
 need not compute. 
 
 It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the 
 heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a 
 Skeptical World. An insincere world; a godless 
 untruth of a world! It is out of this, as I consider, 
 that the whole tribe of social pestilences, French 
 Revolutions, Chartisms, and what not, have derived 
 their being, — their chief necessity to be. This must 
 alter. Till this alter, nothing can beneficially alter. 
 My one hope of the world, my inexpugnable conso- 
 lation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that 
 this is altering. Here and there one does now find a 
 man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, 
 and no Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is 
 alive, not dead or paralytic; and the world is alive, 
 instinct with Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as 
 in the beginning of days! One man once knowing 
 this, many men, all men, must by and by come to 
 know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever will take 
 the spectacles off his eyes and honestly look to know! 
 For such a man the Unbelieving Century, with its 
 unblessed Products is; already past; a new century, 
 is already come. The old unblessed Products and 
 Performances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, 
 preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other 
 noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole 
 world huzzaing at its heels, he can say, composedly 
 stepping aside: Thou art not true; thou art not 
 extant, only semblant; go thy way! Yes, hollow 
 Formulism, grows Benthamism, and other unheroie 
 atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly de- 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 217 
 
 dining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but 
 an exception, — such as now and then occurs. I pro- 
 phesy that the world will once more become sincere; 
 a believing world with many Heroes in it, a Heroic 
 World! It will then be a victorious world; never 
 till then. 
 
 Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men 
 speak too much about the world. Each one of us 
 here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious 
 or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead? 
 One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eter- 
 nities; no second chance to us for evermore! It were 
 well for us to live not as fools and simulacra, but as 
 wise and realities. The world's being saved will not 
 save us; nor the world's being lost destroy us. We 
 should look to ourselves: there is great merit here in 
 the duty of " staying at home!" And, on the whole, 
 to say truth, I never heard of" worlds" being "saved " 
 in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is 
 itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its 
 windy sentimentalism. Lotus not follow it too far. 
 For the saving of the world I will trust confidently to 
 the Maker of the world ; and look a little to my own 
 saving, which I am more competent to! — In brief, 
 for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice 
 greatly that Skepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical 
 Atheism, with all their poison dews, are going, and 
 as good as gone. 
 
 Now it was under such conditions, in those times 
 of Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. 
 Times in which there was properly no truth in life. 
 Old Truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet 
 hidden, not trying to speak. That Man's Life here 
 below was a sincerity and Fact, and would for ever 
 
2 IS THE HERO AS MAX OF LETTERS. 
 
 continue such, no intimation in that dusk of the 
 world, had yet dawned. No intimation ; not even any 
 French Revolution, — which we define to be a truth 
 once more, though a Truth clad in hell-fire! How 
 different was the Luther's pilgrimage, with its as- 
 sured goal, from the Johnson's girt with mere tradi- 
 ditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, unintel- 
 ligible! Mahomet's Formulas were of " wood waxed 
 and oiled," and could be burnt out of one's way: 
 poor Johnson's were far more difficult to burn. — The 
 strong man will ever find work, which means diffi- 
 culty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But 
 to make out a victory, in those circumstances of our 
 poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more diffi- 
 cult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganization, 
 Bookseller Osborne and Four-pence-halfpenny a day; 
 not this alone; but the light of his own soul was 
 taken from him. -No land-mark on the Earth; and, 
 alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Hea- 
 ven! * We need not wonder that none of those Three 
 men rose to victory. That they fought truly, is the 
 highest praise. With a mournful sympathy we will 
 contemplate, if not three living victorious Heroes, 
 as I said, the Tombs of Three fallen Heroes! They 
 fell for us too; making a way for us. There are the 
 mountains which they hurled abroad in their con- 
 fused War of the Giants; under which, their strength 
 and life spent, they now lie buried. 
 
 I have already written of these three Literary He- 
 roes, expressly or incidentally; what I suppose is 
 known to most of you ; what need not be spoken or 
 written a second time. They concern us here as the 
 singular Prophets of that singular age; for such they 
 
LECT. V. THE IIEKO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 219 
 
 virtually were; and the aspect they and their world 
 exhibit, under this point of view, might lead us into 
 reflections enough! I call them, all three, Genuine 
 Men more or less; faithfully, for most part uncon- 
 sciously, struggling to be genuine, and plant them- 
 selves on the everlasting truth of things. This to a 
 degree that eminently distinguishes them from the 
 poor artificial mass of their contemporaries; and ren- 
 ders them worthy to be considered as Speakers, in 
 some measure, of the everlasting truth, as Prophets 
 in that age of theirs. By Nature herself a noble ne- 
 cessity was laid on them to be so. They were men 
 of such magnitude that they could not live on unre- 
 alities,— clouds, froth and all inanity gave way under 
 them: there was no footing for them but on firm 
 earth; no rest or regular motion for them, if they 
 got not footing there. To a certain extent, they were 
 Sons of Nature once more in an age of Artifice; 
 once more, Original Men. 
 
 As for Johnson, I have always considered him to 
 be, by nature, one of our great English souls. A 
 strong and noble man; so much left undeveloped 
 in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might 
 he not have been, — Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! 
 On the whole, a man must not complain of his "ele- 
 ment," of his "time" or the like; it is thriftless work 
 doing so. His time is bad; well then, he is there 
 to make it better! — Johnson's youth was poor, iso- 
 lated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not 
 seem possible that, in any the favourablest outward 
 circumstances, Johnson's life could have been other 
 than a painful one. The world might have had 
 more of profitable work out of him, or less; but his 
 effort against the world's work could never have been 
 
220 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 a light one. Nature, in return for his nobleness, had 
 said to him, Live in an element of diseased sorrow. 
 Nay perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness were in- 
 timately and even inseparably connected with each 
 other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about 
 girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spi- 
 ritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus' 
 shirt on him, which shoots in on him dull incurable 
 misery: the Nessus' shirt not to be stripped off, which 
 is his own natural skin ! In this manner, he had to 
 live. 
 
 Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with 
 his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of 
 thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this 
 Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he 
 could come at: school-languages and other merely 
 grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The 
 largest soul that was in all England; and provision 
 made for it of " fourpence-halfpenny a day." Yet a 
 giant invincible soul; a true man's. One remem- 
 bers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the 
 rough, seamy-faced, raw-boned College Servitor 
 stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn 
 out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner se- 
 cretly places a new pair at his door; and the raw- 
 boned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, 
 with his dim eyes, with what thoughts, — pitches them 
 out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or 
 what you will; but not beggaiy: we cannot stand 
 beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole 
 world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and 
 want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is 
 a type of the man's life, this pitching away of the 
 *hoes. An original man; — not a second-hand, bor- 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 221 
 
 rowing or begging man: Let us stand on our own 
 basis, at any rate! On such shoes as we ourselves 
 can get.* On frost and mud, if you will, but honest- 
 ly on that; on the reality and substance which Na- 
 ture gives us, not on the semblance, on the thing she 
 has given another than us f 
 
 And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood 
 and self-help, was there ever soul more tenderly 
 affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really 
 higher than he? Great souls are always loyally 
 submissive, reverent to what is over them; only 
 small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a 
 better proof of what I said the other day, That the 
 sincere man was by nature the obedient man ; that 
 only in a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedience 
 to the Heroic. The essence of originality is not that 
 it be new: Johnson believed altogether in the old; 
 he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for 
 him; and in a right heroic manner, lived under them. 
 He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are 
 to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man 
 of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and 
 facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier 
 was it for him that he could so stand : but in all for- 
 mulas that he could stand by, there needed to be a 
 most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that 
 poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted 
 with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this 
 Universe glared in for ever, wonderful, indubitable, 
 unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too ! 
 How he harmonized his Formulas with it, how he 
 managed at all under such circumstances: that is a 
 thing worth seeing. A thing " to be looked at with 
 reverence, with pity, with awe." That Church of 
 19 
 
222 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 St. Clement Danes, where Johnson still worshipped 
 in the era of Voltaire, is to be a venerable place. 
 
 It was in virtue of his sincerity, of his speaking 
 still in some sort from the heart of Nature, though 
 in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a 
 Prophet. Are not all dialects "artificial?" Artificial 
 things are not all false; — nay, every true product of 
 Nature will infallibly shape itself; we may say all 
 artificial things are, at the starting of them, true. 
 What we call " Formulas " are not in their origin bad ; 
 they are indispensably good. Formula is method, 
 habitude; found wherever man is found. Formulas 
 fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, 
 leading towards some sacred or high object, whither 
 many men are bent. Consider it. One man, full 
 of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds out a way of doing 
 somewhat, — were it of uttering his soul's reve- 
 rence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting 
 his fellow-man. — An inventor was needed to do that, 
 a poet; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought 
 that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his 
 way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the be- 
 ginning of a "Path." And now see: the second 
 man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, 
 it is the easiest method. In the footsteps of his fore- 
 goer; yet with improvements, changes where such 
 seem good; at all events with enlargements, the Path 
 ever widening itself as more travel it ; — till at last there 
 is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may 
 travel and drive. While there remains a City or 
 Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, 
 the Highway shall be right welcome ! When the City 
 is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this man- 
 ner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 223 
 
 the world have come into existence, and gone out of 
 existence. Formulas all begin by being full of sub- 
 stance; you may call them the skin, the articulation 
 into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that 
 is already there; they had not been there otherwise. 
 Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become 
 doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much 
 as we talk against formulas, I hope no one of us is 
 ignorant withal of the high significance of true Formu- 
 las; that they were, and will ever be, the indispen- 
 sablest furniture of our habitation in this world. 
 
 Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his " sin- 
 cerity." He has no suspicion of his being particularly 
 sincere, — of his being particularly any thing! A hard- 
 struggling, weary-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls 
 himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in 
 the world, not to starve, but to live — without steal- 
 ing! A noble unconsciousness is in him. He does 
 not " engrave Truth on his watch-seal ;" no, but he 
 stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. 
 Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man 
 whom nature has appointed to do great things is, first 
 of all, furnished with that openness of Nature which 
 renders him incapable of being /^sincere! To his 
 large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all 
 hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of 
 this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, 
 nay, even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is 
 ever present to him-, — fearful and wonderful, on this 
 hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; un- 
 recognised, because never questioned or capable of 
 (question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napo- 
 leon; all the Great Men I ever heard of have this as 
 the primary material of them. Innumerable com- 
 
224 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 monplace men are debating, are talking every where 
 their common-place doctrines, which they have 
 learned by logic, by rote, at second-hand : to that 
 kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have 
 truth ; truth which he feels to be true.* How shall 
 he stand otherwise? His whole soul, at all mo- 
 ments, in all ways, tells him that there is no stand- 
 ing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. 
 Johnson's way of thinking about this world is not 
 mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I recog- 
 nise the everlasting element of heart-sincerity in 
 both ; and see with pleasure how neither of them 
 remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as chaff 
 sown ; in both of them is something which the seed- 
 field will grow. 
 
 Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a 
 Gospel to them, — as all like him always do. The 
 highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a 
 kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much 
 is to be done and little is to be known," see how you 
 will do it ! A thing well worth preaching. "A 
 world where much is to be done and little is to be 
 known:" do not sink yourselves in boundless, bottom- 
 less abysses of Doubt, of wretched god-forgetting Un- 
 belief; — you were miserable then, powerless, mad: 
 how could you do or work at all? Such Gospel John- 
 son preached and taught; — coupled, theoretically and 
 practically, with this other great Gospel, "Clear your 
 mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on 
 the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your 
 own real torn shoes: "that will be better for you," as 
 Mahomet says ! I call this, call these two things 
 joined together, a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps 
 that was possible at that time. 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 225 
 
 Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency 
 and celebrity, are now as it were disowned by the 
 young generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's 
 opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of 
 thinking and of living, we may hope, will never be- 
 come obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books the indis- 
 putable traces of a great intellect and great heart; — 
 ever welcome, under what obstructions and perver- 
 sions soever. They are sincere words, those of his; 
 he means things by them. A wondrous buckram 
 style, — the best he could get to then; a measured 
 grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in 
 a very solemn way, grown obsolete now; sometimes 
 a tumid size of phraseology, not in proportion to the 
 contents of it: all this you will put up with. For 
 the phraseology, tumid or not, has always something 
 within it. So many beautiful styles, and books, 
 with nothing in them; — a man is a malefactor to the 
 world who writes such! They are the avoidable 
 kind! — Had Johnson left nothing but his Dictionary, 
 one might have traced there a great intellect, a 
 genuine man. Looking to its clearness of definition, 
 its general solidity, honesty, insight and successful 
 method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. 
 There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it 
 stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, 
 finished symmetrically complete: you judge that a 
 true builder did it. 
 
 One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted 
 to poor Bozzy. He passes for a mean, inflated, 
 gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. 
 Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever 
 remain note-worthy. The foolish, conceited Scotch 
 Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaeh- 
 
 19* 
 
%26 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 ing in such awe-struck attitude the great dusty irasci- 
 ble Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a 
 genuine reverence for Excellence ; a ivorshijj for He- 
 roes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship 
 were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, 
 exist always, and a certain worship of them! We 
 will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of 
 the witty Frenchman, That no man is a Hero to his 
 valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero's 
 blame, but the Valet's: that his soul, namely, is a 
 mean valel-sou\ ! He expects his Hero to advance 
 in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains 
 borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. 
 It should stand rather, No man can be a Grand- 
 Monarque to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your 
 Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there is left 
 nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantas- 
 tically carved; — admirable to no valet. The valet 
 does not know a Hero when he sees him ! Alas, no: 
 it requires a kind of Hero to do that; — and one of 
 the world's wants, in this as in other senses, is for 
 most part want of such. 
 
 On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's 
 admiration was well bestowed ; that he could have 
 found no soul in all Englnnd so worthy of bending 
 down before? Shall we not say, of this great mourn- 
 ful Johnson, too, that he guided his difficult confused 
 existence wisely ; led it well, like a right valiant 
 man? That waste chaos of Authorship by Trade; 
 that waste chaos of Skepticism in religion and poli- 
 tics, in life-theory and life-practice ; in his poverty, 
 in his dust and dimness, with the sick body and the 
 rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. 
 -Not wholly without a loadstar in the Eternal; he 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 227 
 
 had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have : 
 with his eyes set on that, he would change his course 
 for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower 
 sea of time. "To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death 
 and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag." 
 Brave old Samuel: idtimus Romanorum! 
 
 Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. 
 He is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, ex- 
 citable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather than 
 strong. He had not "the talent of Silence," an in- 
 valuable talent; which few Frenchmen, or indeed 
 men of any sort in these times, excel in! The suf- 
 fering man ought really "to consume hisown smoke;" 
 there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made 
 it intone, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, 
 all smoke is capable of becoming! Rousseau has not 
 depth or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first 
 characteristic of true greatness. A fundamental mis- 
 take'to call vehemence and rigidity strength ! A 
 man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though 
 six men cannot hold him then. He that can walk 
 under the heaviest weight without staggering, he is. 
 the strong man. We need for ever, especially in 
 these loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves of 
 that. A man who cannot hold his peace, till the 
 time come for speaking and acting, is no right 
 man. 
 
 Poor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A 
 high, but narrow-contracted intensity in it: bony 
 brow; deep, straight-set eyes, in which there is 
 something bewildered-looking, — bewildered, peering 
 with lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery, even 
 ignoble misery, and also of the antagonism against 
 
228 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 that; something mean, plebeian there, redeemed only 
 by intensity: the face of what is called a Fanatic, — 
 a sadly contracted Hero ! We name him here be- 
 cause, with all his drawbacks, and they are many, 
 he has the first and chief characteristic of a Hero: he 
 is heartily in earnest. In earnest, if ever man was; 
 as none of these French Philosophers were. Nay, 
 one would say, of an earnestness too great for his 
 otherwise sensitive, rather feeble nature; and which 
 indeed in the end drove him into the strangest inco- 
 herences, almost delirations. There had come, at 
 last, to be a kind of madness in him: his Ideas 
 possessed him like demons, hurried him so about, 
 drove him over steep places! — 
 
 The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we 
 easily name by a single word, Egotism; which is in- 
 deed the source and summary of all faults and mise- 
 ries whatsoever. He had not perfected himself into 
 victory over mere Desire; a mean Hunger, in many 
 sorts, was still the motive principle of him. I am 
 afraid he was a very vain man; hungry for the 
 praises of men. You remember Genlis's experience 
 of him. She took Jean Jacques to the Theatre; he 
 bargaining for a strict incognito. — "He would not be 
 seen there for the world!" The curtain did happen 
 nevertheless to be drawn aside: the Pit recognised 
 Jean Jacques, but took no great notice of him ! He 
 expressed the bitterest indignation; gloomed all the 
 evening, spake no other than surly words. The glib 
 Countess remained entirely convinced that his anger 
 was not at being seen, but at not being applauded 
 when seen. How the whole nature of the man is 
 poisoned; nothing but suspicion, self-isolation, fierce 
 moody ways! He could not live with any body. A 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 229 
 
 man of some rank from the country, who visited him 
 often, and used to sit with him, expressing all reve- 
 rence and affection for him, comes one day; finds 
 Jean Jacques full of the sourest, unintelligible hu- 
 mour. "Monsieur," said Jean Jacques, with flaming 
 eyes, " I know why you come here. You come 
 to see what a poor life I lead; how little is in my 
 poor pot that is boiling there. Well, look into the 
 pot! There is half a pound of meat, one carrot and 
 three onions; that is all: go and tell the whole world 
 that, if you like, Monsieur!" — A man of this sort 
 was far gone. The whole world got itself supplied 
 with anecdotes, for light laughter, for a certain thea- 
 trical interest, from these perversions and contortions 
 of poor Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they were not 
 laughing or theatrical ; too real to him! The con- 
 tortions of a dying gladiator : the crowded amphi- 
 theatre looks on with entertainment ; but the gladia- 
 tor is in agonies and dying. 
 
 And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his pas- 
 sionate appeals to Mothers, with his Contrat-social, 
 with his celebrations of Nature, even of savage life 
 in Nature, did once more touch upon Reality, strug- 
 gle towards Reality; was doing the function of a 
 Prophet to his Time. As he could, and as the Time 
 could! Strangely, through all that defacement, de- 
 gradation and almost madness, there is in the inmost 
 heart of poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. 
 Once more, out of the element of that withered, 
 mocking Philosophism, Skepticism, and Persiflage, 
 there has arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling; 
 and knowledge that this Life of ours is true; not a 
 Skepticism, Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an 
 awful Reality. Nature had made that revelation to 
 
230 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 him; had ordered him to speak it out. He got it 
 spoken out; if not well and clearly, then ill and 
 dimly, — as clearly as he could. Nay, what are all 
 errors and perversities of his, even those stealings of 
 ribands, aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, 
 if we will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard 
 dazzlement and staggerings to and fro of a man sent 
 on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he cannot 
 yet find ? Men are led by strange ways. One should 
 have tolerance for a man, hope of him; leave him 
 to try yet what he will do. While life lasts, hope 
 lasts for every man. 
 
 Of Rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated 
 still among his countrymen, I do not say much. His 
 Books, like himself, are what I call unhealthy ; not 
 the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality in 
 Rousseau. Combined with such an intellectual gift 
 as his, it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous attrac- 
 tiveness: but they are not genuinely poetical. Not 
 white sunlight; something operatic; a kind of rose- 
 pink, artificial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather 
 it is universal among the French since his time. 
 Madame de Stael has something of it; St. Pierre; 
 and down onwards to the present astonishing coavul~ 
 sionary " Literature of Desperation," it is every where 
 abundant. That same rose-pink is not the right hue* 
 Look at a Shakspeare, at a Goethe, even at a Walter 
 Scott! He who has once seen into this, has seen the 
 difference of the True from the Sham-True, and will 
 discriminate them ever afterwards. 
 
 We had to observe in Johnson how much good a 
 Prophet, under all disadvantages and disorganiza-* 
 tions, can accomplish for the world. In Rousseau 
 we are called tp look rather at the fearful amount o£ 
 
LECT. V THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 231 
 
 evil which, under such disorganization, may accom- 
 pany the good. Historically it is a most pregnant 
 spectacle, that of Rousseau. Banished into Paris 
 garrets, in the gloomy company of his own Thoughts 
 and Necessities there; driven from post to pillar; 
 fretted, exasperated till the heart of him went mad, 
 he had grown to feel deeply that the world was not 
 his friend nor the world's law. It was expedient, if 
 any way possible, that such a man should not have 
 been set in flat hostility with the world. He could 
 be cooped into garrets, laughed at as a maniac, left 
 to starve like a wild beast in his cage; — but he could 
 not be hindered from setting the world on fire/ The 
 French Revolution found its Evangelist in Rousseau. 
 His semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of 
 civilized life, the preferability of the savage to the 
 civilized, and such like, helped well to produce a 
 whole delirium in France generally. True, you may 
 well ask, What could the world, the governors of the 
 world, do with such a man ! Difficult to say what 
 the governors of the world could do with him I What 
 he could do with them is unhappily clear enough, — 
 guillotine a great many of them! Enough now of 
 Rousseau. 
 
 It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, un- 
 believing, second-hand Eighteenth Century, that of 
 a Hero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard 
 figures and productions, in the guise of a Robert 
 Burns. Like a little well in the rocky desert places 
 — like a sudden splendour of Heaven in the artificial 
 Vauxhall! People knew not what to make of it. 
 They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire- work; 
 alas, it let itself be so taken, though struggling half- 
 
232 THE HERO AS MAN OP LETTERS. 
 
 blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that! Per- 
 haps no man had such a false reception from his 
 fellow men. Once more a very wasteful life-drama 
 was enacted under the sun. 
 
 The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. 
 Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place 
 held and place merited constitute perverseness of lot 
 for a man, no lot could be more perverse than Burns's. 
 Among those second-hand acting-figures, mimes for 
 most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a 
 giant Original Man; one of those men who reach 
 down to perennial Deeps, who take rank with the 
 Heroic among men: and he was born in a poor Ayr- 
 shire hut. The largest soul of all the British lands 
 came among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scot- 
 tish Peasant. — His Father, a poor toiling man, tried 
 various things; did not succeed in any; was involved 
 in continual difficulties. The Steward, Factor as the 
 Scotch call him, used to send letters and threaten- 
 ings, Burns says, "which threw us all into tears/' 
 The brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his 
 brave heroine of a wife; and those children, of whom 
 Robert was one ! In this Earth, so wide otherwise, 
 no shelter for them. The letters " threw us all into 
 tears :" figure it. The brave Father, 1 say always; — 
 a silent Hero and poet; without whom the son had 
 never been a speaking one! Burns's Schoolmaster 
 came afterwards to London, learned what good society 
 was; but declares that in no meeting of men did he 
 ever enjoy better discourse than at the hearth of this 
 peasant. And his poor " seven acres of nursery- 
 ground," nor the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor 
 any thing he tried to get a living by, would prosper 
 with him ; he had a sore unequal battle all his days. 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 293 
 
 But he stood to it valiantly ; a wise, faithful,unconquer- 
 able man; — swallowing down how many sore suffer- 
 ings daily into silence; fighting like an unseen Hero, 
 — nobody publishing newspaper-paragraphs about 
 his nobleness; voting pieces of plate to him! How- 
 ever, he was not lost; nothing is lost. Robert 
 is there; the outcome of him, — and indeed of many 
 generations of such as him. 
 
 This Burns appeared under every disadvantage: 
 uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil; 
 and writing when it came to that, m a rustic, special 
 dialect, known only to a small province of the coun- 
 try he lived in. Had he written, even what he did 
 write, in the general language of England, I doubt 
 not he had already become universally recognised as 
 being, or capable to be, one of our greatest men. 
 That he should have tempted so many to penetrate 
 through the rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof 
 that there lay something far from common within it. 
 He has gained a certain recognition, and is continu- 
 ing to do so over all quarters of our wide Saxon world: 
 wheresoever a Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to 
 be understood, by personal inspection of this and the 
 other, that one of the most considerable Saxon men 
 of the Eighteenth century was an Ayrshire Peasant 
 named Robert Burns. Yes, I will say, here too was 
 a piece of the right Saxon stuff: strong as the Harz- 
 rock, rooted in the depths of the world; — rock, yet 
 with wells of living softness in it! A wild im- 
 petuous whirlwind in passion and faculty slumbered 
 quiet there; such heavenly melody dwelling in the 
 heart of it. A noble rough genuineness; homely, 
 rustic, honest; true simplicity of strength; with its 
 20 
 
234 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity; — like the old 
 Norse Thor, the Peasant-god ! — 
 
 Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and 
 worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, 
 in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of 
 speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense, and 
 heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stripped cutting 
 peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever after- 
 wards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis 
 of mirth, ("fond gaillard" as old Marquis Mirabeau 
 calls it,) a primal element of sunshine and joyful- 
 ness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qua- 
 lities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of 
 Burns. A large fund of hope dwells in him: spite 
 of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He 
 shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth vic- 
 torious over them. It is as the lion shaking "dew- 
 drops from his mane;" as the swift-bounding horse, 
 that laughs at the shaking of the spear. But indeed, 
 Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Burns's, are they not 
 the outcome properly of warm generous affection, — 
 such as is the beginning of all to every man? 
 
 You would think it strange if I called Burns the 
 most gifted British soul we had in all that century of 
 his: and yet I believe the day is coming when there 
 will be little danger in saying so. His writings, all 
 that he did under such obstructions, are only a poor 
 fragment of him. Professor Stewart remarked very 
 justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good for much, 
 that his poetry was not any particular faculty; but 
 the general result of a naturally vigorous original 
 mind expressing itself in that way. Burns's gifts, 
 expressed in conversation, are the theme of all that 
 ever heard him. All kinds of gifts: from the grace- 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 235 
 
 fullest utterances of courtesy, to the highest fire of 
 passionate speech; loud floods of mirth, soft wait- 
 ings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing in- 
 sight: all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate 
 him as a man whose speech "led them off their feet." 
 This is beautiful: but still more beautiful that which 
 Mr. Lockhart has recorded, which I have more than 
 once alluded to, How the waiters and ostlers at inns 
 would get out of bed, and come crowding to hear 
 this man speak! Waiters and ostlers: — they too 
 were men, and here was a man ! I have heard much 
 about his speech; but one of the best things I ever 
 heard of it was, last year, from a venerable gentle- 
 man long familiar with him. That it was speech 
 distinguished by always having something in it. "He 
 spoke rather little than much," this old man told 
 me; "sat rather silent in those early days, as in the 
 company of persons above him; and always when 
 he did speak, it was to throw new light on the mat- 
 ter." I know not why any one should ever speak 
 otherwise! — But if we look at his general force of 
 soul, his healthy robustness every way, the rugged 
 downrightness, penetration, generous valour and 
 manfulness that was in him, — where shall we readi- 
 ly find a better gifted man? 
 
 Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, 
 I sometimes feel as if Burns might be found to resem- 
 ble Mirabeau more than any other. They differ 
 widely in vesture; yet look at them intrinsically. 
 There is the same burly, thick-necked strength of 
 body as of soul; — built, in both cases, on what the 
 old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, by 
 course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has 
 much more of bluster; a noisy, forward unrest- 
 
236 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 ing man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is 
 veracity and sense, power of true insight, superiori- 
 ty of vision. The thing that he says is worth re- 
 membering. It is a flash of insight into some object 
 or other: so do both these men speak. The same 
 raging passions; capable too in both of manifesting 
 themselves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit, 
 wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity; these 
 were in both. The types of the two men were not 
 dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, debated 
 in National Assemblies; politicized as few could. 
 Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in cap- 
 ture of smuggling schooners in the Solway Frith; 
 in keeping silence over so much, where no good 
 speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible: this 
 might have bellowed forth Ushers de Breze and the 
 like, and made itself visible to all men, in managing 
 of kingdoms, in ruling of great and ever-memorable 
 epochs! But they said to him reprovingly, his Offi- 
 cial Superiors said, and wrote : " You are to work, 
 not think. " Of your thinking faculty, the greatest 
 in this land, we have no need; you are to gauge 
 beer there; for that only are you wanted. Very 
 notable; — and worth mentioning, though we know 
 what is to be said and answered ! As if Thought, 
 Power of Thinking, were not, at all times, in all 
 places and situations of the world, precisely the thing 
 that was wanted. The fatal man, is he not alwa}< s 
 the unthinking man, the man who cannot think and 
 see; but only grope, and hallucinate, and missee 
 the nature of the thing he works with? He missees 
 it, mistakes it, as we say; takes it for one thing, and 
 it is another thing, — and leaves him standing like a 
 Futility there! He is the fatal man; unutterably 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OE LETTERS. 537 
 
 fatal, put in the high places of men.— Why com- 
 plain of this? say some. Strength is mournfully 
 denied its arena; that was true from of old. Doubt- 
 less; and the worse for the arena, say I ! Complain- 
 ing profits little; stating of the truth may profit. 
 That a Europe, with its French Revolution just 
 breaking out, finds no need of a Burns except for 
 gauging beer, — is a thing I, for one, cannot rejoice 
 at!— 
 
 Once more we have to sa3 T here that the chief 
 quality of Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his 
 Poetry, in his Life. The Song he sings is not of 
 fantasticalities; it is of a thing felt, really there; 
 the prime merit of this, as of all in him, and of his 
 Life generally, is truth. The life of Burns is what 
 we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage 
 sincerity, — not cruel, far from that; but wild, wrest- 
 ling naked with the truth of things. In that sense, 
 there is something of the savage in all great men. 
 
 Hero-worship, — Odin, Burns? Well; these Men 
 of Letters too were not without a kind of Hero-wor- 
 ship: but what a strange condition has that got into 
 now! The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prj^- 
 ing about the door, eager to catch any word that fell 
 from Burns, were doing unconscious reverence to the 
 Heroic. Johnson had his Boswell for worshipper. 
 *- Rousseau had worshippers enough ; princes calling 
 on him in his mean garret ; the great, the beautiful 
 doing reverence to the poor moon-struck man. For 
 himself a most portentous contradiction ; the two 
 ends of his life not to be brought into harmony. He 
 sits at the tables of grandees ; and has to copy mu- 
 sic for his own living. He cannot even get his music 
 copied : " By dint of dining out," says he, " I run 
 20* 
 
23S THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 the risk of dying by starvation at home." For his 
 worshippers too a most questionable thing ! If doing 
 Hero-worship well or badly be the test of vital well- 
 being or ill-being to a generation, can we say, that 
 these generations are very first-rate? — And yet our 
 heroic Men of Letters do teach, govern, are kings, 
 priests, or what you like to call them; intrinsically 
 there is no preventing it by any means whatever. 
 ; The world has to obey him who thinks and sees in 
 the world. The world can alter the manner of that ; 
 can either have it as blessed continuous summer sun- 
 shine, or as unblessed black thunder and tornado, — 
 with unspeakable difference of profit for the world ! 
 The manner of it is very alterable; the matter and 
 fact of it not, by any power under the sky. Light; 
 or failing that, lightning: the world can take its 
 choice. Not whether we call an Odin god, prophet, 
 priest, or what we call him: but whether we believe 
 the word he tells us : there it all lies. If it be a true 
 word, we shall have to believe it; believing it, we 
 shall have to do it. What name or welcome we give 
 him or it, is a point that concerns ourselves mainly. 
 It, the new Truth, new, deeper revealing of the 
 Secret of this Universe, is verily of the nature of a 
 message from on high; and must and will have itself 
 
 obeyed. 
 
 My last remark is on that notablest phasis of 
 Burns's history, his visit to Edinburgh. Often it 
 seems to me as if his demeanour there were the high- 
 est proof he gave of what a fund of worth and ge- 
 nuine manhood was in him. If we think of it, few 
 heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a 
 man. So sudden; all common Lionism, which 
 ruins innumerable men, was as nothing to this. It is 
 
LECT. V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 239 
 
 as if Napoleon had been made a King of, not gradu- 
 ally, but at once from the Artillery Lieutenancy in 
 the Regiment La Fere. Burns, still only in his 
 twenty-seventh year, is no longer even a ploughman; 
 he is flying to the West Indies to escape disgrace and 
 a jail. This month he is a ruined peasant, his wages 
 seven pounds a year, and these gone from him : next 
 month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, hand- 
 ing down jewelled Duchesses to dinner; the cyno- 
 sure of all eyes ! Adversity is sometimes hard upon 
 a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, 
 there are a hundred that will stand adversity. I ad- 
 mire much the way in which Burns met all this. 
 Perhaps no man one could point out, was ever so 
 sorely tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, 
 unastonished; not abashed, not inflated, neither 
 awkwardness nor affectation: he feels that he there is 
 the man Robert Burns; that the frank is but the 
 guinea-stamp;'-' that the celebrity is but the candle- 
 light, which will show what man, not in the least 
 make him a better or other man ! Alas, it may rea- 
 dily, unless he look to it, make him a worse man; a 
 wretched inflated wind-bag, — inflated till he burst 
 and become a dead lion; for whom, as some one has 
 said, " there is no resurrection of the body;" worse 
 than a living dog! Burns is admirable here. 
 
 And yet, alas, as 1 have observed elsewhere, these 
 Lion-hunters were the ruin and death of Burns. It 
 was they that rendered it impossible for him to live! 
 They gathered round him in his farm; hindered his 
 industry; no place was remote enough for them. He 
 could not get his Lionism forgotten, honestly as he 
 was disposed to do so. He falls into discontents, into 
 miseries, faults; the world getting ever more deso- 
 
2 40 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. 
 
 late for him; health, character, peace of mind, all 
 gone; — solitary enough now. It is tragical to think 
 of ! These men came but to see him ; it was out of no 
 sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. They 
 came to get a little amusement; they got their amuse- 
 ment; — and the Hero's life went for it ! 
 
 Richter says, in the island of Sumatra there is a 
 kind of "Light-chafers," large Fire-flies, which peo- 
 ple stick upon spits, and illuminate the ways with at 
 night. Persons of condition can thus travel with a 
 pleasant radiance, which they much admire. Great 
 honour to the Fire-flies! But — ! — 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 
 [Friday, 22d May,1840.] 
 
 THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: 
 
 MODERN REVOLUTIONISM. 
 
 We come now to the last form of Heroism ; that 
 which we call Kingship. The Commander over 
 Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, 
 and loyally surrender themselves, and find their wel- 
 fare in doing so, may be reckoned the most impor- 
 tant of Great Men. He is practically the summary 
 for us of all the various figures of Heroism; Priest, 
 Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity 
 we can fancy to reside in a man, imbodies itself 
 here, to command over us, furnish us with constant 
 practical teaching, tell us for the day and hour what 
 we are to do. He is called Rex, Regulator, Roi: 
 our own name is still better; King, Conning, which 
 means Can-ning, Able-man. 
 
 Numerous Considerations, pointing towards deep, 
 questionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, pre- 
 sent themselves here: on the most of which we must 
 resolutely for the present forbear to speak at all. 
 
 As Burke said that perhaps fair Trial by Jury was 
 the soul of Government, and that all legislation, ad- 
 ministration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of 
 it, went on, in order "to bring twelve impartial men 
 into a jury-box;" — so, by much stronger reason, may 
 
242 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 I say here, that the finding of your Ableman, and 
 getting him invested with the symbols of ability, with 
 dignity, worship, (worth-ship,) royalty, knighthood, 
 or whatever we call it, so that he may actually have 
 room to guide according to his faculty of doing it, — 
 is the business, well or ill accomplished, of all social 
 procedure whatsoever in this world ! Hustings- 
 speeches, Parliamentary motions, Reform Bills, 
 French Revolutions, all mean at heart this; or else 
 nothing. Find in any country the Ablest Man that ex- 
 ists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally 
 reverence him : you have a perfect government for 
 that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, 
 voting, constitution-building, or other machinery 
 whatsoever can improve it a whit. It is in the per- 
 fect state; an ideal country. The Ablest Man; he 
 means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest 
 Man; what he tells us to do must be precisely the 
 wisest, fittest, that we could any where or any how 
 learn; — the thing which it will in all ways behoove 
 us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing doubt- 
 ing, to do! Our doing and life were then, so far as 
 government could regulate it, well regulated; that 
 were the ideal of constitutions. 
 
 Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be 
 completely imbodied in practice. Ideals must ever 
 lie a very great way off; and we will right thank- 
 fully content ourselves with any not intolerable ap- 
 proximation thereto! Let no man, as Schiller says, 
 too querulously " measure by a scale of perfection 
 the meagre product of reality " in this poor world of 
 ours. We will esteem him no wise man; we will 
 esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And 
 yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 243 
 
 that Ideals do exist; that if they be not approxi- 
 mated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck ! 
 Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a wall perfectly per- 
 pendicular, mathematically this is not possible; a 
 certain degree of perpendicularity suffices him ; and 
 he, like a good bricklayer, who must have done with 
 his job, leaves it so. And yet if he sway too much 
 from the perpendicular; above all, if he throw plum- 
 met and level quite away from him, and pile brick 
 on brick heedless, just as it comes to hand — ! Such 
 bricklayer, I think, is in a bad way. He has for* 
 gotten himself: but the law of Gravitation does not 
 forget to act on him; he and his wall rush down into 
 confused welter of ruin! — 
 
 This is the history of all rebellions, French Revo- 
 lutions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. 
 You have put the too Unable Man at the head of 
 affairs! The too ignoble, unvaliant, fatuous man. 
 You have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural 
 necessity whatever, of putting the Able Man there. 
 Brick must lie on brick as it may and can. Unable 
 Simulacrum of Ability, quack, in a word, must adjust 
 himself with quack, in all manner of administration 
 of human things; — which accordingly lie unadminis- 
 tered, fermenting into unmeasured masses of failure, 
 of indigent misery: in the outward, and in the in- 
 ward or spiritual, miserable millions stretch out the 
 hand for their due supply, and it is not there. The 
 "law of gravitation " acts; Nature's laws do none of 
 them forget to act. The miserable millions burst 
 forth into Sansculottism, or some other sort of mad- 
 ness: bricks and bricklayer lie as a fatal chaos! — 
 
 Much sorry stuff, written some hundred years ago 
 or more, about the "Divine right of Kings," moulders 
 
244 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 unread now in the Public Libraries of this country. 
 Far be it from us to disturb the calm process by 
 which it is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in 
 those repositories! At the same time not to let the 
 immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, 
 some soul of it behind, — I will say that it did mean 
 something; something true, which it is important for 
 us and all men to keep in mind. To assert that in 
 whatever man you choose to lay hold of, (by this or 
 the other plan of clutching at him;) and clapped a 
 round piece of metal on the head of, and called 
 King, — there straightway came to reside a divine 
 virtue, so that he became a kind of god, and a Divi- 
 nity inspired him with faculty and right to rule over 
 you to all lengths: this, — what can we do with this 
 but leave it to rot silently in the Public Libraries? 
 But I will say withal, and that is what these Divine- 
 right men meant, That in Kings, and in all human 
 Authorities, and relations that men, god-created, can 
 form among each other, there is verily a Divine 
 Right or else a Diabolical Wrong; one or the other of 
 these two ! For it is false altogether, what the last 
 Skeptical Century taught us, that this world is a 
 steam engine. There is a God in this world: and a 
 God's-sanction, or else the violation of such, does 
 look out from all ruling and obedience, from all 
 moral acts of men. There is no act more moral be- 
 tween men than that of rule and obedience. - Wo to 
 him that claims obedience when it is not due; wo to 
 him that refuses it when it is! God's law is in that, 
 I say, however the Parchment-laws may run: there 
 is a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong at the 
 . • heart of every claim that one man makes upon ano- 
 ther. 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 245 
 
 It can do none of us harm to reflect on this: in all 
 the relations of life it will concern us ; in Loyalty 
 and Royalty, the highest of these. I esteem the 
 modern error, that all goes by self-interest and the 
 checking and balancing of greedy knaveries, and 
 that in short there is nothing divine whatever in the 
 association of men, a still more despicable error,, 
 natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that 
 of a "divine right" in people called Kings. I say, 
 Find me the true Konning, King, or Able-man, and 
 he has a divine right over me. That we knew in 
 some tolerable measure how to find him, and that 
 all men were ready to acknowledge his divine right 
 when found: this is precisely the healing which a 
 sick world is every where, in these ages, seeking 
 after! The true King, as guide of the practical, has 
 ever something of the Pontiff in him, — guide of the 
 spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. This 
 too is a true saying. That the King is head of the 
 Church. — But we will leave the Polemic stuff of a 
 dead century to lie quiet on its book-shelves. 
 
 Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having 
 your Able-man to seek, and not knowing in what 
 manner to proceed about it L That is the world's 
 sad predicament in these times of ours. They are 
 times of revolution, and have long been. The brick- 
 layer with his bricks, no longer heedful of the plum- 
 met or the law of gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, 
 and it all welters as we see! But the beginning of 
 it was not the French Revolution; that is rather the 
 end, we can hope. It were truer to say, the begin- 
 ning was three centuries farther back: in the refor- 
 mation of Luther. That the thing which still called 
 21 
 
246 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 itself Christian Church had become a Falsehood, and 
 brazenly went about pretending to pardon men's 
 sins for metallic coined money, and to do much else 
 which in the everlasting truth of Nature it did not now 
 do: here lay the vital malady. The inward being 
 wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. 
 Belief died away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The 
 builder cast away his plummet; said to himself, "What 
 is gravitation? Brick lies on brick there!" Alas, 
 does it not still sound strange to many of us, the 
 assertion that there is a God's-truth in the business 
 of god-created men: that all is not a kind of grimace, 
 an "expediency," diplomacy, one knows not what ! — 
 From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, 
 " You, self-styled Papa, you are no Father in God 
 at all; you are a Chimera, whom I know not how 
 to name in polite language!" — from that onwards to 
 the shout which rose round Camille Desmoulins in 
 the Palais Royal, " Jlux amies!" when the people 
 had burst up against all manner of Chimeras, — I 
 find a natural historical sequence. That shout too, 
 so frightful, half-infernal, was a great matter. Once 
 more the voice of awakened nations; — starting con- 
 fusedly as out of nightmare, as out of death-sleep, 
 into some dim feeling that Life w T as real; that God's- 
 world was not an expediency and diplomacy! In- 
 fernal; — yes, since they would not have it otherwise. 
 Infernal, since not celestial or terrestrial! , Hollow- 
 ness, insincerity has to cease; sincerity of some sort 
 has to begin. Cost what it may, reigns of terror, 
 horrors of French Revolution or what else, we have 
 to return to truth. Here is a Truth, as I said : a 
 Truth clad in hell fire, since they would not but have 
 it so! — 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 247 
 
 A common theory among considerable parties of 
 men in England and elsewhere used to be, that the 
 French Nation had in those days, as it were, gone 
 mad; that the French Revolution was a general act 
 of insanity, a temporary conversion of France and 
 large sections of the world into a kind of Bedlam. 
 The Event had risen and raged; but was a madness 
 and non-entity, — gone now happily into the regions 
 of Dreams and the Picturesque! — To such comforta- 
 ble philosophers, the Three days of July, 1830, 
 must have been a surprising phenomenon. Here is 
 the French Nation risen again, in musketry and 
 death-struggle, out shooting and being shot, to make 
 that same mad French Revolution good! The sons 
 and grandsons of those men, it would seem, persist 
 in the enterprise: they do not disown it; they will 
 have it made good; will have themselves shot, if it 
 be not made good! To philosophers who had made 
 up their life-system on that madness-quietus, no 
 phenomenon could be more alarming. Poor Nie- 
 buhr, they say, the Prussian professor and Historian, 
 fell broken-hearted in consequence; sickened, if we 
 can believe it, and died of the Three Days! It 
 was surely not a very heroic death; — little better 
 than Racine's, dying because Louis Fourteenth 
 looked sternly on him once. The world had stood 
 some considerable shocks in its time; might have 
 been expected to survive the Three Days too, and 
 be found turning on its axis after even them ! The 
 Three Days told all mortals that the old French Re- 
 volution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory 
 ebullition of Bedlam, but a genuine product of this 
 Earth where we all live; that it was verily a Fact 3 
 and the world in general would do well every where 
 to regard it as such. 
 
24S THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 Truly without the French Revolution, one would 
 not know what to make of an age like this at all. 
 We will hail the French Revolution as shipwrecked 
 mariners might the sternest rock, in a world other- 
 wise all of baseless sea and waves. A true Apoca- 
 lj 7 pse, though a terrible one, to this false withered 
 artificial time; testifying once more that Nature is 
 preternatural, if not divine, then diabolic; that Sem- 
 blance is not Reality; that it has to become Reality, 
 or the world will take fire under it, — burn it into what 
 it is, namely, Nothing! Plausibility has ended; empty 
 Routine has ended ; much has ended. This, as with 
 a Trump of Doom, has been proclaimed to "all men. 
 ' They are the wisest who will learn it soonest* Long 
 confused generations before it be learned; peace im- 
 possible till it be! The earnest man, surrounded, as 
 ever, with a world of inconsistencies, can await pa- 
 tiently, patiently strive to do his work, in the midst 
 of that. Sentence of Death is written down in Hea- 
 ven against all that; sentence of Death is now pro- 
 claimed on the Earth against it : this he with his eyes 
 may see. And surely, I should say, considering the 
 other side of the matter, what enormous difficulties 
 lie there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, 
 the inexorable demand for solution of them is press- 
 ing on, — he may easily find other work to do than 
 labouring in the Sansculottic province at this time of 
 day! 
 
 To me, in these circumstances, that of u Hero-wor- 
 ship n becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most 
 solacing fact one sees in the world at present. There 
 is an everlasting hope in it for the management of 
 the world: Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, 
 societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 240 
 
 would remain.'- The certainty of Heroes being sent 
 us ; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes 
 when sent: it shines like a pole-star through smoke- 
 clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing 
 and conflagration. 
 
 Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to 
 those workers and fighters in the French Revolution. 
 Not reverence for Great Men; not any hope, or be- 
 lief, or even wish, that Great Men could again appear 
 in the world ! Nature, turned into a " Machine," was 
 as if effete now ; could not any longer produce Great 
 Men : — I can tell her, she may give up the trade al- 
 together, then ; we cannot do without Great Men ! — 
 But neither have I any quarrel with that of " Liberty 
 and Equality ;" with the faith that, wise great men 
 being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small 
 men would suffice. It was a natural faith then and 
 there. " Liberty and Equality; no Authority needed 
 any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for such Au- 
 thorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood; no 
 more of it! ; We have had such forgeries, we will 
 now trust nothing. So many base-plated coins pass- 
 ing in the market, the belief has now become common 
 that no gold any longer exists, — and even that we 
 can do very well without gold !" — I find this, among 
 other things, in that universal cry of Liberty and 
 Equality; and find it very natural, as matters then 
 stood. 
 
 And yet surely it is but the transition from false to 
 true. Considered as the whole truth, it is false alto- 
 gether; — the product of entire skeptical blindness, as 
 yet only struggling to see. Hero-worship exists for 
 ever and every where: not Loyalty alone; it extends 
 from divine adoration down to the lowest practical 
 51* 
 
250 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 regions of life. " Bending before men," if it is not to 
 be a mere empty grimace, better dispensed with than 
 practised, is Hero-worship; a recognition that there 
 does dwell in that presence of our brother something 
 divine; that every created man, as Novalis said, is 
 a "revelation in the Flesh." They were Poets too, 
 that devised all those graceful courtesies which make 
 life noble! Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; 
 it need not be such. And Loyalty, religious Worship 
 itself, are still possible; nay still inevitable. 
 
 May we not say, moreover, while so many of our 
 late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, 
 that nevertheless every Great Man, every genuine 
 man, is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of 
 Disorder? It is a tragical position for a true man to 
 work in revolutions. He seems an anarchist; and 
 indeed a painful element of anarchy does encumber 
 him atevery step, — him to whose whole soul anarchy 
 is hostile, hateful. His mission is Order ; every man's 
 is. He is here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, 
 into a thing ruled, regular. He is the missionary of 
 Order. Is not all work of man in this world a making 
 of Order? The carpenter finds rough trees; shapes 
 them, constrains them into square fitness, into pur- 
 pose and use. We are all born enemies of Disorder; 
 it is tragical for us all to be concerned in image- 
 breaking and down-pulling; for the Great Man, more 
 a man than we, it is doubly tragical. 
 
 Thus too all human things, maddest French Sans- 
 culottism, do and must work towards order. I say, 
 there is not a man in them, raging in the thickest of 
 the madness, but is impelled withal, at all moments, 
 towards Order. His very life means that; Disorder 
 is dissolution, death. No chaos but it seeks a centre 
 
&ECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 251 
 
 to revolve round. While man is man, some Cromwell 
 or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sansculot- 
 tism. — Curious: in those days when Hero-worship was 
 the most incredible thing to every one, how it does 
 come out nevertheless, and assert itself practically, 
 in a way which all have to credit. Divine right, 
 take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine 
 might withal! While old false Formulas are getting 
 trampled every where into destruction, new genuine 
 Substances unexpectedly unfold themselves inde- 
 structible. In rebellious ages, when Kingship itself 
 seems dead and abolished, Cromwell, and Napoleon 
 step forth again as kings. The History of these men 
 is what we have now to look at, as our last phasis of 
 Heroism. The old ages are brought back to us; the 
 manner in which Kings were made and Kingship it- 
 self first took rise., is again exhibited in the history 
 of these Two. 
 
 We have had many civil-wars in England; wars 
 <of Red and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort, 
 wars enough, which are not very memorable. But 
 that war of the Puritans has a significance which 
 belongs to no one of the others. Trusting to your 
 candour, which will suggest on the other side what 
 I have not room to say, I will call it a section once 
 more of that great universal war which alone makes 
 up the true History of the World, — the war of Belief 
 against Unbelief] The struggle of men intent on the 
 real essence of things, against men intent on the sem- 
 blances and forms of things. The Puritans, to many, 
 seem mere savage Iconoclasts, fierce destroyers of 
 Forms; but it were more just to call them haters of 
 unlrue Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud 
 and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to 
 
252 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 me to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest; 
 an unfortunate Pedant rather than any thing worse. 
 His" Dreams," and superstitions, at which they laugh 
 so, have an affectionate, loveable kind of character. 
 He is like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is 
 forms, College-rules; whose notion is that these are 
 the life and safety of the world. He is placed sud- 
 denly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, 
 at the head not of a College but of a Nation, to regu- 
 late the most complex deep-reaching interests of 
 men. He thinks they ought to go by the old decent 
 regulations; nay, that their salvation would lie in 
 extending and improving these. Like a weak man, 
 he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards his pur- 
 pose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of pru- 
 dence, no cry of pity: He will have his College-rules 
 obeyed by his Collegians; that first-; and till that, 
 nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I said. He 
 would have it the world was a College of that kind , 
 and the world iccts not that. Alas, was not his doom 
 stern enough? Whatever wrongs he did, were they 
 not all frightfully avenged on him? 
 
 It is meritorious to insist on forms; Religion and 
 all else naturally clothes itself in forms. Every where 
 the formed world is the only habitable one. The 
 naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I 
 praise in the Puritans; it is the thing I pity, — prais- 
 ing only the spirit which had rendered that inevi- 
 table! All substances clothe themselves in forms : 
 but there are suitable true forms, and then there are 
 untrue, unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one 
 might say, Forms which grow round a substance, if 
 we rightly understand that, will correspond to the real 
 nature and purport of it, will be true, good; forms 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 253 
 
 which are consciously put round a substance, bad. 1 
 invite you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from 
 false in Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from 
 empty pageant, in all human things. 
 
 There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity In 
 forms. In the commonest meeting of men, a person 
 making, what we call, "set speeches/' is not he an 
 offence? In the mere drawing-room, whatsoever 
 courtesies you see to be grimaces, prompted by no 
 spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to 
 get away from; But suppose now it were some mat- 
 ter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter 
 (as Divine worship is,) about whieh your whole soul, 
 struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not how 
 to form itself into utterance at all, and preferred 
 formless silence to any utterance there possible, — 
 what should we say of a man coming forward to re- 
 present or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer- 
 mummery? Such a man, — let him depart swiftly, 
 if he love himself! You have lost your only son; 
 are mute, struck down, without even tears: an im- 
 portunate man importunately offers to celebrate Fu- 
 neral Games for him in the manner of the Greeks! 
 Such mummery is not only not to be accepted; it is 
 hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets 
 called " Idolatry," worshipping of hollow shows; what 
 all earnest men do and will reject. We can partly 
 understand what those poor Puritans meant. Laud 
 dedicating that St. Catherine Creed's Church, in the 
 manner we have it described; with his multiplied 
 ceremonial bowings, gesticulations, exclamations! 
 surely it is rather the rigorous formal Pedant, intent 
 on his st College-rules," than the earnest Prophet, in- 
 lent on the essence of the matter! 
 
254 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 Puritanism found such forms insupportable; tram- 
 pled on such forms; — we have to excuse it for saying, 
 No form at all rather than such! It stood preaching 
 in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its 
 hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest soul 
 into the earnest souls of men : is not this virtually the 
 essence of all Churches whatsoever?* The nakedest, 
 savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, 
 however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with 
 due semblance by and by, if it be real. No fear of 
 that; actually no fear at all. Given the living man, 
 there will be found clothes for him; he will find him- 
 self clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that 
 it is both clothes and man — ! We cannot " fight the 
 French" by three hundred thousand red uniforms; 
 there must be men in the inside of them ! Semblance, 
 1 assert, must actually not divorce itself from Reality. 
 If Semblance do, — why then there must be men 
 found to rebel against Semblance, for it has become 
 a lie! These two Antagonisms at war here, in the 
 case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as 
 the world. They went to fierce battle over England 
 in that age; and fought out their confused controversy 
 to a certain length, with many results for all of us. 
 
 In the age which directly followed that of the Pu- 
 ritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to 
 have justice done them. Charles Second and his 
 Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set 
 to judge what the worth or meaning of such men 
 might have been. That there could be any faith or 
 truth in the life of a man was what these poor Roches- 
 ters, and the age they ushered in, had forgotten. 
 Puritanism was hung on gibbets, — like the bones of 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 255 
 
 the leading Puritans. Its work nevertheless went on 
 accomplishing itself. All true work of a man, hang 
 the author of it on what gibbet you like, must and 
 will accomplish itself. We have our Habeas Corpus, 
 our free Representation of the People; acknowledg- 
 ment, wide as the world, that all men are, or else 
 must, shall, and will become, what we call free 
 men; — men with their life grounded on reality and 
 justice, not on tradition, which has become unjust 
 and a chimera ! This in part, and much besides this, 
 was the wx^rk of the Puritans. 
 
 And indeed, as these things became gradually ma- 
 nifest, the character of the Puritans began to clear 
 itself. Their memories were, one after another, taken 
 down from the gibbet; nay, a certain portion of them 
 are now, in these days, as good as canonized. Eliot, 
 Hampden; Pym, nay Ludlow, Hutcheson, Vane him- 
 self, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes; political 
 Conscript Fathers, to whom in no small degree we 
 owe what makes us a free England: it would not be 
 safe for any body to designate these men as wicked. 
 Few Puritans of note but find their apologists some- 
 where, and have a certain reverence paid them by 
 earnest men. One Puritan, I think, and almost he 
 alone, our poor Cromwell, seems to hang yet on the 
 gibbet, and find no hearty apologist any where. Him 
 neither saint nor sinner will acquit of great wicked- 
 ness. A man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and 
 so forth: but he betrayed the Cause! Selfish ambi- 
 tion, dishonesty, duplicity; a fierce, coarse, hypocri- 
 tical Tartuffe; turning all that noble Struggle for 
 constitutional Liberty into a sorry farce played for 
 his own benefit: this and worse is the character they 
 give of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts 
 
256 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 with Washington and others; above all, with these 
 noble Pyms and Hampdens, whose noble work he 
 stole for himself, and ruined into a futility and de- 
 formity. 
 
 This view of Cromwell seems to me the unnatu- 
 ral product of a century like the Eighteenth. As 
 we said of the valet, so of the Skeptic: He does 
 not know a Hero when he sees him ! The Valet 
 expected purple mantles, gilt sceptres, body-guards 
 and flourishes of trumpets: the Skeptic of the 
 Eighteenth century looks for regulated respectable 
 Formulas, " Principles,'' or what else he may call 
 them; a style of speech and conduct which has got 
 to seem " respectable," which can plead for itself in 
 a handsome articulate manner, and gain the suffrages 
 of an enlightened skeptical Eighteenth century! It 
 is, at bottom, the same thing that both the Valet and 
 he expect: the garnitures of some acknowledged 
 royalty, which then they will acknowledge! The 
 King coming to them in the rugged tmformulistic 
 state shall be no King. 
 
 For my own share, far be it from me to say or in- 
 sinuate a word of disparagement against such charac- 
 ters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym; whom I believe to 
 have been right worthy and useful men. I have 
 read diligently what books and documents about them 
 I could come at; with the honestest wish to admire, 
 to love, and worship them like Heroes; but I am 
 sorry to say, if the real truth must be told, with very 
 indifferent success ! At bottom, I found that it would 
 not do. They are very noble men these; step along 
 in their stately way, with their measured euphuisms, 
 philosophies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-mo- 
 neys, Monarchies of Man; a most constitutional, un- 
 
JLECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 257 
 
 blameable, dignified set of men. But the heart re- 
 mains cold before them; the fancy alone endeavours 
 to get up some worship of them. 
 
 What man's heart does, in reality, break forth into 
 any fire of brotherly love for these men? They are 
 become dreadfully dull men! One breaks down of- 
 ten enough in the constitutional eloquence of the 
 admirable Pym, with his "seventhly and lastly." 
 You find that it may be the admirablest thing in the 
 world, but that it is heavy, — heavy as lead, barren 
 as brick clay; that, in a word, for you there is little 
 or nothing now surviving there! One leaves all 
 these Nobilities standing in their niches of honour: 
 the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of them 
 all, in whom one still finds human stuff.- The great 
 savage Baresark: he could write no euphuistic Mo- 
 narchy of Man; did not speak, did not work with 
 glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for him- 
 self any where. But he stood bare, not cased in 
 euphuistic coat-of-mail; he grappled like a giant, 
 face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of 
 things! That, after all, is the sort of man for one. 
 I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other 
 sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not 
 a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small 
 thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who 
 would not touch the work but with gloves on! 
 
 Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tole- 
 rance of the Eighteenth century for the other happier 
 Puritans seem to be a very great matter. One might 
 say, it is but a piece of Formulism and Skepticism 
 like the rest. They tell us, It was a sorrowful thing 
 to consider that the foundation of our English Liber- 
 ties should have been laid by " Superstition." These 
 33 
 
25S THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 Puritans came forward with Calvinistic incredible 
 Creeds, anti-Laudisms, Westminster Confessions; de- 
 manding, chiefly of all, that they should have liberty 
 to worship in their own way. Liberty to tax them- 
 selves: that was the thing they should have demand- 
 ed ! It was Superstition, Fanaticism, disgraceful 
 ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to insist on 
 the other thing! — Liberty to tax oneself ? Not to 
 pay out money from your pocket except on reason 
 shown ? No century, 1 think, but a "rather barren 
 one would have fixed on that as the first right of 
 man ! 1 should say, on the contrary, A just man 
 will generally have better cause than money in what 
 shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his 
 Government. Ours is a most confused world; in 
 which a good man will be thankful to see any kind 
 of Government maintain itself in a not insupport- 
 able manner: and here in England, to this hour, if 
 he is not ready to pay a great many taxes which he 
 can see very small reason in, it will not go well with 
 him, I think! He must try some other climate than 
 this. Tax-gatherer? Money? He will say: "Take 
 my money, since you can, and it is so desirable to 
 you; take it, — and take yourself away with it; and 
 leave me alone to my work here, /am still here; 
 can still work, after all the money you have taken 
 from me !" But if they come to him, and say, " Ac- 
 knowledge a Lie; pretend to say you are worship- 
 ping God, when you are not doing it: believe not 
 the thing that you find true, but the thing that I find, 
 or pretend to find true!" He will answer: "No; by 
 God's help, No ! You may take my purse; but I 
 cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The cash 
 is any highwayman's who might meet me with a 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 259 
 
 loaded pistol: but the Self is mine and God my 
 Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the 
 death, and revolt against you, and on the whole front 
 all manner of extremities, accusations and confusions, 
 in defence of that!" — 
 
 Really, it seems to me the one reason which could 
 justify revolting, this of the Puritans. It has been 
 the soul of all just revolts among men. Not Hun- 
 ger alone produced even the French Revolution; no, 
 but the feeling of the insupportable, all-pervading 
 Falsehood which had now imbodied itself in Hunger, 
 in universal material Scarcity and nonentity, and 
 thereby become indisputably false in the eyes of all! 
 We will leave the Eighteenth century with its "liber- 
 ty to tax itself." We will not astonish ourselves that 
 the meaning of such men as the Puritans remained 
 dim to it. To men who believed in no reality at all, 
 how shall a real human sou], the intensest of all 
 realities, as it were the Voice of this world's Maker 
 still speaking to us, — be intelligible? What it can- 
 mot reduce into constitutional doctrines relative to 
 "taxing," or other the like material interest, gross, 
 palpable to the sense, such a eentury will needs re- 
 ject as an amorphous heap of rubbish. Hampdens, 
 Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme of much 
 constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid; — 
 which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as ice does: 
 and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a chaotic 
 mass of " madness," " Hypocrisy," and much else. 
 
 From of old, I will confess, this theory of Crom- 
 well's falsity has been incredible to me. Nay, I can- 
 not believe the like, of any Great Man whatever. 
 Multitudes of Great Men figure in History as false, 
 selfish men; but if we will consider it, they are but 
 
260 THE HERO AS KIXG. 
 
 figures for us, unintelligible shadows: we do not see 
 into them as men that could have existed at all. A 
 superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye 
 but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could 
 form such notions of Great Men. Can a great soul 
 be possible without a conscience in it, the essence of 
 all real souls, great or small? — No, we cannot figure 
 Cromwell as a Falsity and Fatuity; the longer I 
 study him and his career, I believe this the less. 
 Why should we? There is no evidence of it. Is 
 it not strange that, after all the mountains of calum- 
 ny this man has been subject to, after being repre- 
 sented as the very prince of liars, who never, or 
 hardly ever, spoke truth, but always some cunning 
 counterfeit of truth, there should not yet have been 
 one falsehood brought clearly home to him? A 
 prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. Not one 
 that I could yet get sight of. It is like Pococke ask- 
 ing Grotius, Where is your proof of Mahomet's Pi- 
 geon? No proof! — Let us all leave these calumni- 
 ous chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. They 
 are not the portraits of the man; they are distracted 
 phantasms of him, the joint product of hatred and 
 darkness. 
 
 Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it 
 seems to me, a very different hypothesis suggests it- 
 self. What little we know of his earlier obscure 
 years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not 
 all betoken an earnest, hearty, sincere kind of man? 
 His nervous melancholic temperament indicates ra- 
 ther a seriousness too deep for him. You remember 
 that story of his having a vision of the Evil Spirit, 
 predicting that he would be Sovereign of England, 
 and so forth. In broad daylight, some huge white 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 261 
 
 Spectre, which he took to be the Devil, with preter- 
 natural monitions of some sort, shows itself to him : 
 the Royalists made immense babble about it; but 
 apart from their speculations, we can suppose this 
 story of the Spectre to be true. Then there are af- 
 terwards those hypochondriacal visions; the Doctor 
 sent for; Oliver imagining that "the steeple of Hun- 
 tingdon was about to tumble on him." Such an ex- 
 citable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stubborn 
 bulk of his; in other words, a soul of such intensity, 
 such sensibility with all its strength ! 
 
 The young Oliver is sent to study law; falls, for a 
 little period, into some of the dissipations of youth; 
 but speedily repents, abandons all this: not much 
 above twenty he is married, settled as .an altogether 
 grave and quiet man. He pays back what money 
 he had won at gambling; — he does not think any 
 gain of that kind could be really his. It is very in- 
 teresting, very natural, this " conversion," as they 
 well name it; this awakening of a great true soul 
 from the worldly slough, to see into the awful truth 
 of things; — to see that Time and its shows all rested 
 on Eternity, and this poor Earth of ours was the 
 threshold either of Heaven or Hell! Oliver's life 
 at Ely as a sober industrious Farmer, is it not alto- 
 gether as that of a true devout man? He has re- 
 nounced the world and its ways: its prizes are not 
 the thing that can enrich him. He tills the earth; 
 he reads his Bible; daily assembles his servants round 
 him to worship God. He comforts persecuted minis- 
 ters, is fond of preaching: nay, can himself preach, 
 — exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem the 
 time. In all this what "hypocrisy," "ambition," 
 " cant," or other falsity ? The man's hopes, I do be- 
 22* 
 
262 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 lieve, were fixed on the other Higher World; his aim 
 to get well thither by walking well through his hum- 
 ble course in this world. He courts no notice: what 
 could notice here do for him? "Ever in his great 
 Taskmaster's eye." — It is striking, too, how he comes 
 out once into public view: he, since no other is will- 
 ing to come, in resistance to a public grievance. I 
 mean, in the matter of the Bedford Fens. No one 
 else will go to law with Authority; therefore he will. 
 That matter once settled, he returns back into ob- 
 scurity, to his Bible and his Plough. "Gain influ- 
 ence ?" His influence is the most legitimate; derived 
 from personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, 
 reasonable and determined man. In this way he 
 has lived till past forty; old age is now in view of 
 him, and the earnest portal of Death and Eternity; 
 — it was at this point that he suddenly became "am- 
 bitious!" I do not interpret his Parliamentary Mis- 
 sion in that way ! 
 
 His successes in Parliament, his successes through 
 the war, are honest successes of a brave man; who has 
 more resolution in the heart of him, more light in the 
 head of him than other men. His prayers to God; 
 his spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had 
 preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, 
 through the furious clash of a world all set in con- 
 flict, through desperate-looking envelopments at 
 Dunbar; through the death hail of so many battles; 
 mercy after mercy; to the "crowning mercy" of 
 Worcester Fight; all this is good and genuine for a 
 deep-hearted Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain 
 unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not God but their 
 own "love-locks," frivolities and formalities, living 
 quite apart from contemplations of God, living 
 without God in the world, need it seem hypocritical 
 
I.ECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 263 
 
 Nor will his participation in the King's death 
 involve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern 
 business killing of a King! But if you once go to 
 war with him, it lies there; this and all else lies 
 there. Once at war, you have made wager of bat- 
 tle with him: it is he to die, or else you. Reconci- 
 liation is problematic; may be possible, or, far more 
 likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally ad- 
 mitted that the Parliament, having vanquished 
 Charles First, had no way of making any tenable 
 arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian par- 
 ty, apprehensive now of the Independents, were 
 most anxious to do so; anxious indeed as for their 
 own existence; but it could not be. The unhappy 
 Charles, in whose final Hampton-Court negotiations, 
 shows himself as a man fatally incapable of being 
 dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and 
 would not understand ; — whose thought did not in 
 any measure represent to him the real fact of the 
 matter; nay, worse, whose word did not at all repre- 
 sent his thought. We may say this of him without 
 cruelty, with deep pity rather: but it is true and un- 
 deniable. Forsaken there of all but the name of 
 Kingship, he still, finding himself treated with out- 
 ward respect as a King, fancied that he might play 
 off party against party, and smuggle himself into 
 his old power by deceiving both, Alas, they both 
 discovered that he was deceiving them. ■ (A man 
 whose word will not inform you at all what he means 
 or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You 
 must get out of that man's w^ay, or put him out of 
 yours! {-The Presbyterians, in their despair, were 
 still for believing Charles, though found false, unbe- 
 lievable again and again. Not so Cromwell: "For 
 
264 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 all our fighting," says he, " we are to have a little 
 bit of paper?" No!^- 
 
 In fact, every where we have to note the decisive 
 practical eye of this man; how he drives toward the 
 practical and practicable; he has a genuine insight into 
 what is fact. Such an intellect, I maintain, does not 
 belong to a false man: the false man sees false shows, 
 plausibilities, expediencies: the true man is needed 
 to discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice 
 about the Parliament's Army, early in the contest, 
 How they were to dismiss their city-tapsters, flimsy, 
 riotous persons, and choose substantial yeomen, 
 whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for them: 
 this is advice by a man who saw. Fact answers, if 
 you see into Fact ! Cromwell's Ironsides were the 
 imbodiment of this insight of his; men fearing God; 
 and without any other fear. No more conclusively 
 genuine set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, 
 or of any other land. 
 
 Neither will we blame greatly that word of Crom- 
 well's to them ; which was so blamed : " If the King 
 should meet me in battle, I would kill the King." 
 Why not? These words were spoken to men who 
 stood as before Higher than Kings. They had set 
 more than their own lives on the cast. The Par- 
 liament may call it, in official language, a fighting 
 "for the King:" but we, for our share, cannot under- 
 stand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no sleek 
 officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They 
 have brought it to the calling forth of War: horrid 
 internecine fight, man grappling with man in fire- 
 eyed rage, — the infernal element of man called forth, 
 to try it by that! Do that therefore; since that is 
 the thing to be done. — The successes of Cromwell 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 265 
 
 seem to me a very natural thing! Since he was not 
 shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. That 
 such a man, with the eye to see, with the heart to 
 dare, should advance, from post to post, from victo- 
 ry to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, 
 by whatever name you might call him, the ac- 
 knowledged Strongest man in England, virtually the 
 King of England, requires no magic to explain it ! — 
 
 Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, 
 to fall into Skepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; 
 not to know a sincerity when they see it. For this 
 world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal! The 
 heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intel- 
 lect remains is merely the vulpine intellect. That a 
 true King be sent them is of small use; they do not 
 know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this 
 your King? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in 
 bootless contradiction from the unworthy; and can 
 accomplish little. For himself he does accomplish 
 a heroic life, which is much, which is all; but for the 
 world he accomplishes comparatively nothing. The 
 wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in 
 answering from the witness-box; in your small-debt 
 pie-powder court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The 
 vulpine intellect " detects" him. For being a man 
 worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, 
 your Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centu- 
 ries whether he was a man at all. God's greatest 
 gift to this Earth is sneeringly flung away, if The mi- 
 raculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to 
 pass in the shops as a common guinea: — 
 
 Lamentable this! I say this must be remedied. 
 Till this be remedied in some measure, there is no- 
 
266 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 thing remedied. <•' Detect quacks?" Yes, do, for 
 Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are 
 to be trusted ! Till we know that, what is all our 
 knowledge; how shall we so much as " detect ?" 
 The vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be 
 knowledge, and " detects " in that fashion, is far mis- 
 taken. Dupes indeed are many; but of all dupes, 
 there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in 
 undue terror of being duped. The world does exist; 
 the world has truth in it, or it would not exist!. First 
 recognise what is true, we shall then discern what is 
 false; and properly never till then. 
 
 " Know the men that are to be trusted :" alas, this 
 is yet, in these 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 Va- 
 lets;-— 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 he- 
 roic Cromwell comes; and for a hundred and fifty 
 years he cannot have a vote from us. Why, the in- 
 sincere, unbelieving world is the natural property of 
 the Quack, and of the Father of Quacks and Quacke- 
 ries ! Misery, confusion, unveracity are alone pos- 
 sible 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 it is! 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 Xq 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 267 
 
 be for ever governed by the Unheroic; — had we bal- 
 lot boxes clattering at every street-corner, there 
 were no remedy in these. 
 
 Poor Cromwell, — great Cromwell ! The inarticu- 
 late 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 Euphuisms, 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, wrcformed black of dark- 
 ness ! 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 in- 
 sight he would yet get into the heart of things, the 
 mastery he would get over things: this was his hy- 
 pochondria. The man's misery, as man's misery 
 always does, came of his greatness. Samuel John- 
 son too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken, half- 
 distracted ; the wide element of mournful black en- 
 veloping him, — wide as the world. It is the cha- 
 racter of a prophetic man; a man with his whole 
 soul seeing and struggling to see. 
 
 On this ground, too, I explain to myself Crom- 
 well's reputed confusion of speech. To himself the 
 internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material 
 w T ith which he was to clothe it with utterance was 
 not there. He had lived silent: a great unnamed 
 
26S THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 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. In- 
 tellect is not speaking and logicizing; it is seeing 
 and ascertaining. Virtue, Vir-tus, manhood, hero- 
 hood, is not fair-spoken, immaculate regularity; it is 
 first of all, what the Germans well name it, Tugend 
 ( Taugend dow-ing or Doughtiness,) 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 ex- 
 tempore prayer. These are the free out-pouring ut- 
 terances of what is in the heart: method is not re- 
 quired 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 com- 
 menced with prayer. In dark inextricable-looking 
 difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble, and 
 pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some defi- 
 nite resolution rose among them, some "door of 
 hope," as they would name it, disclosed itself. Con- 
 sider 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 269 
 
 black devouring world not Christian, butMammonish, 
 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 hesi- 
 tation any more? To them it was as the shining of 
 Heaven's own Splendour in the waste-howling'dark- 
 ness; 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, in- 
 articulate one? There is no other method. "Hy- 
 pocrisy?" One begins to be weary of all that. They 
 who call it so, have no right to speak on such mat- 
 ters. They never formed a purpose, what one can 
 call a purpose. They went about balancing expe- 
 diencies, plausibilities; gathering votes, advices; 
 they never were alone with the truth of a thing at 
 all. — Cromwell's prayers were likely to be "elo- 
 quent," 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. 
 23 
 
270 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 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 note-paper. And withal, what a strange proof 
 is it of Cromwell's being the premeditative ever-cal- 
 culating 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 un- 
 derstood him to be meaning this, heard him even 
 say so, and behold he turns out to have been mean- 
 ing that! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But 
 now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable for- 
 tune, 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 ex- 
 tend 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 
 wmnformed on that matter; not, if you can help it, 
 misinformed, but precisely as dark as he was! This, 
 could one hit the right phrase of response, is what 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 271 
 
 the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in 
 such a case. 
 
 Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dia- 
 lect 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, j It is the inevitable 
 position of a great man among small men. t Small 
 men, most active, useful, are to be seen every where, 
 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 traditionally, convention- 
 ality; 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, f 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 
 
272 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his 
 thoughts were about every thing? — 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 judgment 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, dramati- 
 cally unfolded, with all manner of cunning, decep- 
 tive dramaturgy, as he went on, — the hollow, 
 scheming 'rnoxqiriig, 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 as foresee of his 
 own life? Short way ahead of us it is all dim; an 
 ?m\vound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, at- 
 temptabilities, vague looming hopes. This Crom- 
 well had not his life lying all in that fashion of Pro- 
 gram, which he needed then, with that unfathom- 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 273 
 
 able cuhning 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 unde- 
 niable fact kept honestly in view by History. His- 
 torians 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 re- 
 member it now and then. To remember it duly, 
 with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it stood, re- 
 quires indeed a rare faculty ; rare, nay impossible. 
 A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than Shak- 
 speare; 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 dis- 
 tort 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 ambi- 
 tious 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 every 
 body, as it were begging every body for God's sake, 
 to acknowledge him a great man, and set him 
 over the heads of men! Such a creature is among 
 23* 
 
274 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 the wretchedest sights seen under this sun. A great 
 man? A poor morbid prurient empty man; fitter 
 for the ward of an hospital, than for a throne among 
 men. I advise you to keep out of his way. He can- 
 not 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, 1 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 Ma- 
 ker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was al- 
 ready there; no notice would make him other than 
 he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and 
 Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to be 
 limited, not infinite, but finite, and all a measurable 
 matter how it went, — he had been content to plough 
 the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days 
 could not support it any longer, without selling him- 
 self to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages 
 to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of pa- 
 pers haunting him, "Decide this, decide that," 
 which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can per- 
 fectly 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 back-ground of 
 whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 275 
 
 as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech 
 of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puri- 
 tan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, 
 and all else was little to him. To call such a man 
 "ambitious," to figure him as the prurient wind-bag 
 described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. 
 Such a man will say: "Keep your gilt carriages and 
 huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your in- 
 fluentialities, your important businesses. Leave me 
 alone, leave me alone; there is too much 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 
 ribands round his hat; but the great old Samuel stayed 
 at home. The world-wide soul wrapped up in its 
 thoughts, in its sorrows; -/-what could paradings and 
 ribands 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 men- 
 tion of! They are the salt of the Earth. A coun- 
 try 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. Wo 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. 
 
276 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 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 con- 
 tinent of my thought hitherto; I happily have yet 
 had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong 
 enough to speak it. My "system " is not for promul- 
 gation 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? than say, There it is!" 
 
 But now by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, 
 let me say that there are two kinds of ambition; one 
 wholly blameable, 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 him- 
 self 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 277 
 
 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, whe- 
 ther 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?" 
 Hopefuller perhaps, had he not so clearly felt how 
 much 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 Gib- 
 bon 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 a 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 di- 
 vine clearness, into noble utterance and determina- 
 tion to act; casting all sorrows and misgivings un- 
 
278 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 der his feet, counting all affliction and contradiction 
 small, — the whole dark element of his existence 
 blazing into articulate radiance of light and light- 
 ning? 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, whipped, 
 set on pillories, their ears cropped 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 for ever. 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 it- 
 self: 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, experi- 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 279 
 
 enced in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared 
 to consider as capable of being realized. 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, 1 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 ex- 
 hibit here below. Fancy it: that it were made mani- 
 fest to one of us, how we could make the right su- 
 premely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had 
 longed and prayed for, as the highest good to Eng- 
 land and all lands, an attainable fact! 
 
 Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its 
 knowingness, its alertness and expertness in "de- 
 tecting hypocrites," seems to me a rather sorry busi- 
 ness. We have had but one such Statesman in Eng- 
 land; 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, — England might 
 have been a Christian land ! As it is, vulpine know- 
 ingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, " Given a 
 world of Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their 
 
280 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 joint 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 bale- 
 fully incrusted with spots; but it does not quench it- 
 self, and become no Sun at all, but a mass of Dark- 
 ness! I will venture to say that such never befell a 
 great, deep Cromwell; I think, never. Nature's 
 own lion-hearted Son; Antaeus-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 Crom- 
 well 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 2S1 
 
 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, He, since man could not, injustice, 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! Hy- 
 pocrite, mummer, the life of him a mere theatricali- 
 ty; 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 
 for ever pestering you with bundles of paper in red 
 tape? A simple Diocletian prefers planting of cab- 
 bages; a George Washington, no very immeasu- 
 rable man, does the like. One would say, it is what 
 any genuine man could do; and would do. The in- 
 stant his real work were out in the matter of King- 
 ship, — away with it! 
 
 Let us remark, mean while, how indispensable 
 every where 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 al- 
 ways far from being the case. But there was no 
 great Cromwell among them; poor tremulous, hesi- 
 tating, diplomatic Argyles and such like; none of 
 them had a heart true enough for the truth, or durst 
 24 
 
282 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 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 with- 
 out 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 hand, dashes at the drilled Puritan ar- 
 mies 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 indis- 
 pensable 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 Protector- 
 ship, 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 283 
 
 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 authori- 
 ty, cannot continue for ever to sit. What is to be 
 done? — It was a question which theoretical consti- 
 tution-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. Per- 
 haps 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 despica- 
 ble, 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 Par- 
 liament," right of Ejection, Constitutional Formulas 
 of one sort or the other, — the thing is a hungry Fact 
 
284 . THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 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 dis- 
 solve 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 pa- 
 tience failed him. But we will take the favourablest 
 hypothesis ever started for the Parliament; the fa- 
 vourablest, 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 answer- 
 ing 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 Re- 
 form 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? Wiry, the Roy- 
 alists themselves, silenced indeed, but not extermi- 
 nated, perhaps out-number us; the great numerical ma- 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 jority 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 cer- 
 tainty, which we have won, by God's strength and 
 our own right hands, and do now hold here. Crom- 
 well walked down to these refractory Members; in- 
 terrupted 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 un- 
 derstand 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 man* 
 ner 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 Barebone's Parliament, is, so to speak, a Con- 
 vocation of the Notables. From all quarters of Eng- 
 land 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 
 24* 
 
2S6 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 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 appointed Cromwell 
 Protector, and went their ways. 
 
 The second Parliament, chosen by the rule these 
 Notables had fixed upon, 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 dis- 
 missed. Cromwell's concluding Speech to these 
 men is a remarkable one. Most rude, chaotic, as all 
 his 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 
 et births of Providence:" All these changes, so many 
 victories and events, were not forethoughts, and thea- 
 trical 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 play- 
 ing, the world wholly thrown into chaos round him, 
 had foreseen it all, played it all off like a precontrived 
 puppet-show by wood and wire! These things were 
 foreseen by no man, he says; no man could tell 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 287 
 
 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 tri- 
 umphant in these Nations; and you as a parliament 
 could assemble together, and say in what manner 
 all this could be organized, 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 a-nd 
 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 cavil- 
 lings and questionings about written laws for my 
 coming here; — and would send the whole matter 
 into Chaos again, because I have no Notary's parch- 
 ment, but only God's voice from the battle-whirl- 
 wind, for being President among you! That oppor- 
 tunity is gone; and we know not when it will return. 
 You have had your constitutional Logic; and Mam- 
 mon'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 constitu- 
 tional-formulas in your hand; and I my informal 
 struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and "God be 
 judge between you and me!" 
 
 We said above what shapeless, involved, chaotic 
 things these printed Speeches of Cromwell's are. 
 Wilfully ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most: a 
 hypocrite shrouding himself in confused Jesuistic 
 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 
 
288 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 something, search lovingly what that may be: you 
 will find a real speech lying imprisoned in these bro- 
 ken 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 skeptical genera- 
 tions that could not know or conceive of a deep be- 
 lieving man, are far more obscure than Cromwell's 
 Speeches. You look through them only into the in- 
 finite vague of Black and the Inane. "Heats and 
 jealousies," says Lord Clarendon himself : "heats and 
 jealousies," mere crabbed whims, theories, and 
 crotchets; these induced slow, sober, quiet English- 
 men to lay down their ploughs and w T ork; and fly 
 into red fury of confused war against the best-con- 
 ditioned of Kings ! Try if you can find that true. 
 Skepticism writing about Belief may have great gifts; 
 but it is really ultra vires there. It is Blindness lay- 
 ing down the Laws of Optics. — 
 
 Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same 
 rock as his second. Ever the constitutional Formu- 
 la: 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 crea- 
 tion of that? — 
 
 Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing 
 but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each 
 With his district, to coerce the Royalist and other 
 gainsay ers, to govern them*, if not by act cf TarUa* 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 289 
 
 ment, then by the sword. Formula shall not carry 
 it, while the Reality is here! I will go on, protect- 
 ing 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 
 wanted to kill him; to kill the Cause and him. Once 
 embarked, there is no retreat, no return. This Prime 
 Minister could retire no whither except into his tomb. 
 One is sorry for Cromwell in his old clays. His 
 complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Provi- 
 dence has laid on him. Heavy; which he must 
 bear till death. Old Colonel Hutcheson, as his wife 
 relates it, Hutcheson 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 Hutcheson, 
 cased in his Presbyterian formula, sullenly goes his 
 way. — And the man's head now white; his strong 
 arm growing weary with its long work! I think 
 
290 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living 
 in that Palace of his; a right brave woman; as in* 
 deed they lived all an honest God-fearing House- 
 hold there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought 
 it was her son killed. He had to come to her twice 
 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, accom- 
 plish 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 judg- 
 ment that he appealed; nor have men judged him 
 very well. 
 
 Precisely a century and a year after this of Puri- 
 tanism had got itself hushed up into decent compo- 
 sure, and its results made smooth, in 16S8, there 
 broke out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult 
 to hush up, known to all mortals, and like to be long 
 known, hy the name of French Revolution. It is 
 properly the third and final act of Protestantism; the 
 explosive confused return of mankind to Realit}^ 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 291 
 
 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 re- 
 turn 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 Sans- 
 culottism 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 ex- 
 plosion, 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 Unnameable 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 a blaze of Heaven's 
 lightning! Napoleon lived in an age when God was 
 no longer believed; the meaning of all Silence, La- 
 tency, was thought to be Nonentity: he had to be- 
 gin, not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor 
 Skeptical Encyclopedias. This was the length the 
 man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His com- 
 pact, prompt, e very-way articulate character is in 
 itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic 
 
292 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 Particulate Cromwell's. Instead of " dumb Prophet 
 struggling to speak," we have a portentous mixture 
 of the Quack withal! Hume's notion of the Fana- 
 tic-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 blame- 
 able 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 Napo- 
 leon'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, these are no excuses. V A man in no case has 
 any liberty to tell lies. It had been in the long-run 
 belter 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 impor- 
 tance 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 in the bargain. 
 
 Yet Napoleon had a sincerity: we are to distinguish 
 between what is superficial and what is fundamental 
 in insincerity. Across these outer manceuvrings 
 and quackeries of his, which were many and most 
 blameable, let us discern withal that the man had a 
 certain instinctive ineradical feeling for reality: and 
 did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 293 
 
 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 Tuilleries 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, 
 clipped one of the gold tassels from a window-cur- 
 tain, 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 resultat 
 in it; it comes to nothing that one can do. Say no- 
 thing, 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, 
 
 25 
 
294 THE HERO AS KIXG. 
 
 which the whole world, with its old forces and insti- 
 tutions, 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 carriere ouverte aux talens, 
 -f-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 Re- 
 volution 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 De- 
 mocracy, 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: Napo- 
 leon expresses the deepest contempt for persons in 
 authority that they do not restrain this rabble. On 
 the 10th 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 ha- 
 tred of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through 
 all his great work. Through his brilliant Italian 
 Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of Loeben, 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 Re- 
 volution 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 295 
 
 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 tri- 
 umph, — he triumphed so far. -There was an eye to 
 see in this man, a soul to dare and do. He rose natu- 
 rally to be the King, r All men saw that he was such. 
 The common soldiers used to say on the march: 
 "These babbling tflvocats, 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!" 
 The}/- went, and put him there; they and France at 
 large. Chief-consulship, Emperorship, victory over 
 Europe; — till the poor Lieutenant of La Fere, 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-ele- 
 ment got the upper hand; He apostatized 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 things 
 He did not know true from false now when he looked 
 at them,-f-the fearfullest penalty a man pays for 
 yielding to untruth of heart: Self and false ambi- 
 tion had now become his god: se^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 
 wrapped his own reality in, thinking to make it more 
 real thereby ! His hollow Pope's- Concordat, pretend- 
 25* 
 
296 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 ing, 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, consecra- 
 tions by the old Italian Chimera in Notre-Dame there, 
 — "wanting nothing to complete the pomp of it," as 
 Augereau said, "nothing but the half-million men 
 who had died to put an end to all that!" Crom- 
 well'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 Puri- 
 tanism: 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 man 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 cognizable ingredient is doomed to 
 be altogether transitory; and, however huge it may 
 look, is in itself small. Napoleon's working, accord- 
 ingly, what was it with all the noise it made? A 
 flash as of gun-powder wide-spread; a blazing-up as 
 of dry heath. For an hour the whole Universe 
 seems wrapped in smoke and flame; but only for an 
 hour. It goes out: the Universe with its old moun- 
 tains and streams, its stars above and kind soil be- 
 neath, is still there. 
 
 The Duke of Weimar told his friends always, To 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 297 
 
 be of courage; this Napoleonism was unjust, a false- 
 hood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The 
 heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, hold- 
 ing it tyrannously down, the fiercer would the world's 
 recoil against him be, one day. f 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 pal- 
 pable 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 sanc- 
 tion. To what of reality was in him; to that and 
 nothing more:* The rest was all smoke and waste. 
 La carrihre ouverte aux ialens: that great true Mes- 
 sage, which has yet to articulate and fulfil itself 
 every where, he left in a most inarticulate state. He 
 was a great ebauche, rude-draught; as indeed what 
 great man is not? 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. Eng- 
 land itself, he says, is by Nature only an appendage 
 of France; i( 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 under- 
 
298 THE HERO AS KING. 
 
 stand it : inconceivable that the reality has not cor- 
 responded to his programme of it; that France was 
 not all great, that he was not France. U Strong de- 
 lusion/' 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 under foot; to 
 be bound into masses, and be built together, as he 
 liked, for a pedestal to France and him: the world 
 had quite other purposes in view! Napoleon's as- 
 tonishment is extreme. HBut alas, what help now? 
 He had gone that way .of hjs; 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 Napo- 
 leon: a great implement too soon wasted, till it was 
 useless: our last Great Man! 
 
 Our kst, 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 termi- 
 nate. 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 se- 
 cret 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 
 
LECT. VI. THE HERO AS KING. 299 
 
 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 accom- 
 plished 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 
 vou all! 
 
 THE END. 
 

t