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Cromwei.i., Napoleon : Modern Revo- lutionism 225 Cari-yle's Summary 283 Notes ,„-, Cari.ylk's Index 367 Index to Introduction and Noiks yj\ INTRODUCTION Whether or not it is true, that the noblest prospect a Scotchman ever sees is the highroad that leads him to England, many a man of the north country has acted as if it were, ever since James the First set the fashion, and has taken, for good and all, the southward way. In three cen- turies, the band of exiles has grown large and numbers many famous names, but none more illustrious than Thomas Carlyle. In 1834, in the summer that saw the death of Coleridge and the completed publication of Sartor, after a sequestration of six mystic years at Craigenputtoch, Carlyle, on his wife's advice, burnt his ships and flitted, with bag and baggage, to the great Babylon, from which, although he railed against it incessantly, he could no more tear himself away than his hero Johnson. In the suburb of Chelsea, in an old-fashioned house that had stood since the days of Addison, he made his home. There he was destined to pass the remaining sever and forty years of life allotted to him, and to make that humble lodging a point of light in the great murky city, whither, for years to come, the eyes of earnest men and women were to turn with interest, with eagerness, with reverence. There, he did the work appointed him, the building of his three great histor -s ; there, he thought and wrote and triumphed and suffered. That house is known, room by room, from kitchen to suund-proo. study, by thousands who never saw it with their bodily eves. Like the two lives passed within it, that house lies open and xi M!.. t I n If:-.. ri. (,ii xu LECTURES ON HEROES \\ 1 naked to all who wish to explore it. Mean souls are aware of nothing but a cage for spiritual squalor; but others, clearer-eyed, find it, in the prophet's own words, forever venerable. For here lived one who taught, and with authority. Number 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, was a fit home for a man of letters like Carlyle. In a ruined house, a stone's throw away, Smollett, another exiled Scottish author with a temper, wrote Count Fathom, Even nearer was the place where More had entertained Erasmus, when he came to England to study (ireek. The very coffee-house in which Mr. Bickerstiiff saw Pontius Pilate's Wife's Chambermaid's Sister's Hat, and entertained doubts thereon, was still flour- ishing. In Chelsea once lived Bolingbroke, the friend of Pope and teacher of Voltaire ; and earlier still, the Count de Grammont. Not far away, at 4 Upper Cheyne Row, lived Leigh Hunt, the lampooner of the Regent, — he spent two years in prison for calling a prince "a corpulent Adonis of fifty " ! — the peculiar friend of Byron, the original of Harold Skimpole, the enviable hero of Jenny Kissed Me. The win- dows afforded glimpses of the Thames, Turner's own river, of Westminster Abbey, even of the ball and cross above Wren's monument, and, at nights, far away in the west, of the lights of Vauxhall. Here, friends, neither too many nor too few, Mill, Hunt, Sterling, Taylor, Allan Cunningham, gathered round the man and woman of genius ; they never wanted friends; and the letters of that time show that it was a time of peace. As soon as he was settled in his new home, Carlyle set to work, with good heart, upon his first great book. The French Revolution, itself, as he says, a kind of French Revolution, labored over it late and early, lost the first book by the neg- liijence of Mrs. Taylor's maid, according to the famous story, rewrote it, and then, at the end of two years' work, JIVTRODUCTIOX Xltt found that the London booksellers were willing to publish it on the munificent half-profits system, which meant that they got everything and the author, nothing. Three pub- lishers besieged Harriet Martineau in her own house for her book on America ; but, for the history that is among the others, as a living man among corpses, no one would offer a shilling. Carlyle made literature his crutch, not his walking- stick, and it served him ill. His letters show depressioa, natural enough. Of his genius there could be no doubt, still less, of his infinite capacity for taking pains ; his achievement was already great and solid ; he was thrifty with Scottish thrift and proud with Scottish pride ; and yet he had turned forty and had not grasped success. With all his gifts he could not, with the most strenuous efforts, do what a hundred thousand tradesmen in London were doing, make his home secure against poverty. It was in this crisis that his friends found for him a way of escape. From the first, all who knew him were struck with Carlyle's power of the tongue. For a long time, it was greater than his power of the pen ; and when he did master that difficult instrument, his very originality, the thing the world clamors for and when found, abuses, stood in the way of his success. The Edinburgh address almost makes us wish that he had obtained, in time, one of the positions he applied for. Thomas Carlyle, Professor of History, of Moral Philosophy, of Litera- ture, of Things in General, would have been a force in any university ; he might have been the kind of inspired teacher he hoped as a lad to find in Edinburgh, Blackie, Jowett, and Fichte in one. He might st.ill have written all his books and have been a happier man, for hriving an assured livelihood, and regular work, and the constant inspiration o' young disciples. As it was, in the year that Queen VictoriL came to the throne, the year in which 'her little majesty' and The French Revolution began to reign together, Carlyle «!'l 1: 1*1: - '^X ' ^ ft m h ;l 1 - 3! J I 1 B ' * i 'I !j-r XIV LECTURES OX HEROES came before the world as a teacher by word of mouth. His friends found for him a new profession, which he was to follow, for four years, with complete success. This was lecturing. As early as the year of Carlyle's hegira to London, " to seek work and bread," Emerson, his spiritual son, who had sought out the nook-shotten philosopher in the wilds of Dumfries, suggested his coming to America to lecture ; and, for six years, the prospect was not without allurement for him. Spurzheim and Silliman, he was told, had made their thousands by lectures ; and ' the surprising Yankeet ' who bought his books would, no doubt, have supported the lecturer as loyally as they rallied to the struggling author, for whom his own country had not recognition, and scarcely bread. There was warrant for such an undertaking. The poet of The Ancient Mariner, who followed Johnson and pre- ceded Cariyle himself in the office of literary dictator, oracle, and prophet, had given the world his criticisms of Shakspere and Milton, first, in the form of lectures ; and the young De Quincey had then seen the street in front of Count Rumford's Royal Institution blocked with the carriages of women of distinction. Hazlitt had lectured on the English poets; Sydney Smith lectured ; Owen, Airey, Faraday gave popular courses of lectures. Chalmers was to lecture in London at the same time that Cariyle gave his second course. Emer- son was to follow him, and Froude was to hear Carlyle's loud but not unkindly laugh at the 'rather moonshiny close' of one of his discourses. Thackeray, when he damned the four Georges to everlasting fame, occupied the very room in which Cariyle gave his first course ; and it is computed that he talked to the tune of about a guinea a minute. The first half of the nineteenth century, now dead and buried, was, in fact, the Golden Age of lecturing. Cariyle, too, became a lecturer, but he never saw America. INTRODUCTION XV The launching of the lecturer was eflfected by purely human methods. At first, the Royal Institution was thought of ; but their pay was small and their programme was full for the wmter. Then came a bolder conception. Instead of giving a winter course, under the wing of any institution Carlyle should come forward as an independent lecturer in the height of the London SLa>r,n. His friends left little to chance. They circulated a prospectus, opened a subscription book at Saunders and Ottley's, printed tickets, price one gumea, and user" their personal inHuence to gather an audi- ence together. Looking back upon this period, from the time of his great sorrow, Carlyle does not remember clearly whether there were three courses or four, but he does recall the names of those who helped him. These were Miss and Mr. Thomas Wilson of Eccleston Street, "opulent fine Church of England people," deaf Harriet Martineau \ suc- cessful authoress in the first Hush of her popularity, fresh from America and the Abolition riots in Uoston, Frederick LIlK.t, and Henry Taylor, the author of /'////// van Artai'cUe On March 24, ,837, Carlyle writes to his brother John in high spirits. The Marchioness of Lansdowne and honorable women not a few have put down their names for his course • he IS to have an " audience of Marchionesses, Ambassadors '' ''all going hke a house on fire." The prospect is so bright that he inserts a brief ejaculatory prayer against "the mad- ness of popularity." This, perhaps, Carlyle might have omitted, had he known how diligently his friends were drum- ming up recruits for him. A characteristic letter from Sped- ding shows how these little things are managed. On April 4 he invited Monckton Milnes, the "Cool of the evening" the "beautiful little Tory," who, Carlyle thought, should be '-perpetual president of the Heaven and Hell Amalgamatior. i^ociety," to come up to London and help him to roll a log ' I take the opportunity of writing to make you know, if you [' af 'i m n 1 ( »■ XVI LEC TUNES OiV HEROES I do not know already, that Carlylc lectures on German litera- ture next month ; the particulars you will find in the enclosed syllabus, which, if it should convey as much knowledge to you as it does ignorance to me, will be edifying. Of course, you will be here to attend the said lectures, but I want you to come up a little before they begin, that you may assist in pr uring the attendance of others. The list of subscribers is at present not large, and you are just the man to make it grow. As it is Carlyle's first essay in this kind, it is impor- tant that there should be a respectable number of hearers. Some name of decided piety is, I believe, rather wanted. Learning, taste, and nobility are represented by Hallam, Rogers, and Lord Lan?downe. H. Taylor has provided a large proportion of family, wit, and bea tty, and I have assisted them to a little Apostlehood. We want your name to represent the great body of Tories, Roman Catholics, High Churchmen, metaphysicians, poets, and Savage Lan- dor. Come ! " ' The only phrase here that may not be plain is a " little Apostlehood " ; it refers to the brilliant circle of Cambridj^e men, of which Arthur Hallam was the centre. He had been dead four years. The others were Tennyson, James Spedding himself, Milnes, Trench, future Archbishop of Dublin, Alford, John Sterling, F. D. Maurice, Venables, FitzCierald, the translator of Omar, Kinglake, the historian of the Crimean war, and the two Lushingtons. How many of these Spedding induced to attend, is not known ; but the fact remains that the friends of Carlyle worked well, and when the hour came and the man, there was an audience awaiting him. Carlyle's preparation for the course was not so thorough. Up to the day before the lectures began, he was busy with the proofs of The Fraiih RcvolutioH. I'esides, his wife was ill ; he could hear the cough on the other side of the wall, ^ The Life of Lord Iloughton, I, 192. N.Y., n.d. INTRODUCTIOX XVll as he sat up to the ears in books and pamphlets. How- ever, he had large stores of knowledge long laid up, and he chose to draw upon the largest and richest of all. For years, he had been studying, translating, and writing essays on German literature. The extent and intimacy of his knowledge surprised even Goethe, who pronounced him to be "almost more at home in our literature than we our- selves." ' He proposed to cover the whole field of German literary history from Ulfilas to Jean Paul, beginning with the origins of the Teutonic people and ending with forecasts of literature to come.'^ One thinks of Huxley giving a whole lecture on a piece of chalk, and wonders at the distance traversed in a single address; but discursiveness was the note of lecturing then ; one of Coleridge's courses included "Architecture, Gardening, Dress, Music, Painting, and Poetry." There was one great advantage, however. Judg- mg from Spedding's letter, Carlyle was to break up virgin soil. He was to have the rare privilege of addressing an 1 Eckermann, Oct. it, tSaS. *» These were the topics of the six lectures: ..On the Teutonic People, the German Language. Ulfilas. the xXorthern Immigration, and the Nibelungen Lied. 2 On the Minnesinger, Tauler, Reineke Fuchs, the Legend of Faust, the Reformation, Luther, Ulrich von Ilutten. 3- On the Master Singers Hans Sachs. Jacob H.ihme, Decay of German Literature, Anton Ulrich Duke of IJrunswick, Opitz, I^ibnltz 4. On the Resuscitation of German Literature, Lessing, Klop- stock, Gellert, Uvater. Efflorescence of (German Literature. Werther^ iioetz. S- On the Characteristics of New-German Literature, Growth and Decay of Opinion. Faust, I'hilosophy, Kant. Fichte, Schelling. Art and nehef. Goethe. 6. On the Drama, Schiller: Pseudo-Drama. Klinger, Kot/ehnc \Verner: Romance, Tieck, Novalis : Pseudo-Romance. Hoffmann: loetry and German Literature, Herder, Wieland. the Schlegels, Jean i'aul : Results, Anticipations. C.Z.Z. L 1.5. i»- -U f b- i • •• XVIll LECrUHES Of/ HEROES ilil audience on a subject, about which they knew nothing, » d he knew everything. There were minor difficulties. He was resolved not to read his lectures, but to speak extempore, an orde.il doubly dreadful to a nervous man and one inexperienced in the art. Another cause for apprehension was that he, the peas- ant scholar, was to address an audience of fashionable and titled people at Almack's, the gathering-place of London society. One of his lady admirers was afraid he might even sin against the conventionalities, perhaps go so far as to begin with "Gentlemen and Ladies," instead of the usual formula. His wife knew that he was more likely to open firt with "Men and Women," or "Fool creatures come hither for diversion." As his nervousness increased with the approach of the fated day, Carlyle, to keep up his mother's spirits and his own, drafted the humorous valedictory which, after all, he did not need to use : " Good Christians, it has become entirely impossible for me to talk to you about German or any literature or terrestrial thing; one request only I have to make, that you would be kind enough to cover me under a tub for the next six weeks and to go your ways with all my blessing." A more important matter was punctuality. By putting on all the clocks and watches, Mrs. Carlyle knew that she could insure his being at " the place of execution " at the appointed time. How to stop him at "four precisely" was something harder. One device that suggested itself was to lay a lighted cigar upon the table just as the clock struck the hour. Happily all these fears and apprehensions were groundless. May the First, 1837, was a notable day. In the afternoon, Carlyle lectured at A'mack's ; and in the evening Macready produced young Mr. Robert Browning's Strafford, for the first time, at Covent Garden. Hallam, of the Middle Ages, "a broad, old, positive man, with laughing eyes," was chairman INTRODUCTION XIX and brought the lecturer face to face with his first audience, the two hundred ho ers of guinea tickets. It was made up of the elements referred to in Spedding's letter. Learning, taste, nobility, family, wit and beauty were all represented in that assembly ; •• composed of mere quality and n..tabilities." .ays Carlyle. ^ It is easy to figure the scene ; the men all clean shaven, in the clumsy coats, high collars, and enor- mous neck-cloths of the period, the ladies, and there were naturally more ladies ..an men, following the vn tries of fashion in "bishop" sleeves and the -pretty church-and- stnte bonnets," that seemed to Hunt, at times, "to think through all their ribbons." We call that kind of bonnet "coal-scuttle" now, but Maclise's portrait of L.ady Morgan trying hers on before a glass justifies Hunt's epithet. The lecturer was the lean, wiry type of Scot, within an inch of six feet. In face, he was not the bearded, broken-down, broken-hearted Cariyle of the Fry photograph, but the younger Carlyle of the Emerson portrait. Clean-shaven, as was then the fashion, the determination of the lower jaw lying bare, the thick black hair brushed carelessly and coming down low on the bony, jutting forehead, violet-blue eyes, deep-set and alert, the whole face shows the Scot and the peasant in every line. It was a striking face, the union of black hair, blue eyes, and, usually, ruddy color on the high cheek bones, "as if painted ... at the plough's tail." Lady Eastlake remarked, and she w.is an artist. Harriet Martineau notes that he was "yellow as a guinea." but this would be due to some temporary gastric disturbance.' He was very nervous, as was most natural, and stood with down- cast eyes, his fingers picking at the desk before him. At the » Mr. Cro7ier remarked the ruddiness of Carlyi^-s face, even n extreme old age. .See John Heattie Crozier. .1/,. Inner /.,/e, p. ,8j, I-ond.. 1898; and also Mtv.oirs of La whole spiritual history of man from the earliest times to ;he present." Carlyle was some- limes in doubt, his wife tells us, as to whether his audience thought he was pi\ inj; thtni enough for their guine.n ; but surely such a progranune must have satisfied the greediest. This time his preparation was careful. Although he had not made up his mir.d, even as late as February, what he should lecture on, he was reading Dante daily and hoped "to gi\e a .sharp lecture on him for one." A fortnight later, he tells Aitken that his main business is getting something ready in the shape of lectures ; and when he announced to Mrs. Aitken the success of the first of the scries, he couples the " much preparation " with the " trem- bling " that always went before, and was, in part, the secret of his success. He rubbed up his Thucydides and Herod- otus, and found profit in the labor ; but much less in reading Nitbuhr and Michelet. A better lecfire-room than Willis's, ciuiet, lighted from the ceiling, properly seated, was secured at 17 Edward St., Portman Square. In March, Wilson and Darwin are again busy, engineering; but there seems to h;ive been little ditliculty in getting an audience. As the lime drew near, Carlyle . I p xxu LECTURES OJV HEROES Portman Square was not so convenient as Almack's for the fashionable people ; but the fashionable people came again. It was a notable gathering. The Tinus reporter, who may have been Thackeray, observed "the cultivated and intelligent aspect of the audience, of whom an unusually large proportion appeared to be of a high order, both as to station and education, and in whom there was consequently a great number of pleasing and expressive countenances." In the raffish Examiner, Leigh Hunt " suspects " '« it would not be easy to match the audiences which this gentleman has brought together, either on this or the former occasion, for a union of what is usually called respectability with i ^ ! lecture ITT. May "jth. First VexioA — continued. The Romans: Their t:haracter, Thei' Fortune, What They Did— From Virgil to Tacitus — End of I'aganism. I.ecture IV. May wth. .Second Period. Middle Ages — Chris- tianity; Faith — Inventions — Pious Foundations — Pope Ilildebrand — ('rusades — Troubadours — Niebelungen Lied. lecture V. May 14///. .Second Period — continued. Dante — The Italians — Catholicism — Purgatory. Lecture VI. May x'f^th. Second Period — (■<'«//;/«<■(/. The Spaniards — Chivalry — fireatness of the Spanish Nation — Cervantes, His Life, His Hook — Lope — Calderon — Protestantism md the Dutch War. Lecture VII. May 2\st. Second V'^xwA — continued. The Ger- mans — What They Have Done — Reformation — Luther — Ulrich von I lutten — Erasmus. lecture VIII. May 2^th. Second Period — (-(>«/'/««,v/. The Eng- lish : Their Origin, Their Work and Destiny — Elizabethan Era — Shakespeare — John Knox — Milton — P.eginning of Scepticism. Lecture IX. May 2%t/i. Third Period. Voltaire — The French — Scepticism — P'rom Rabelais to Rousseau. lecture X. June i,f/. Third Period — continued. Eighteer Cen- tury in England — Whitfield — Swift — Sterne — Johnson — Hume. Ixxture XL Friday, June ?,th. Third Period — r(W/'/;/7/i.v/. Con- summation of .Scepticism — W'ertherism ^ The French Revolution. Lt'iture XII June I !///. Fourth Pe>iod. Of Modern (krmnn Literature — Goethe aiid His Works. INTKODUCTIO.V XXltl selectness of taste and understanding." The lecturer him- self is of the same opinion. " My audience was supposed to be the best for rank, beauty and intelligence, ever collected in London. I had bonnie braw dames, Ladies this. Ladies that, though I dared not look at them lest they should put me out. I had old men of four score; men middle-aged, with fine, steel-grey beards ; young men of the Universities^ of the law profession, all sitting quite mum there, and the Annandale voice goUying at them." The lecturer's wife is not to be described as gushing ; but she goes beyond even Carlyle himself. " The audience is fair in quantity (more than fair . . .), and in quality it is unsurpassable ; there are women so beautiful and intelligent, that they look like emanations from the moon ; and men whose faces are his- tories, in which one may read with ever new interest." Maurice was of this audience and confessed himself more edified by the lectures than by anything he had heard for a long while.' Monckton Milnes wrote to Aubrey de Vere of the interest they aroused. " He talks as graphically as his French Revolution; his personality is most attractive, i'here he stands simple as a child, and his happy thought dances on his lips, and in his eyes, and takes word and goes away, and he bids it (lod speed, whatever it may be."^ Handsome George Ticknor, enjoying himself very much in London, found time to look in at the tenth lecture, just l)ffore he took ship for the United States ; he was only mod- erately pleased with Carlyle. He thought him ugly and his accent unpleasant ; but he remarked the careful preparation, although the lecturer spoke without notes. " He was impress- ive, I think, though such lecturing could not very well be popular; and in some parts, if he were not poetical, he was picturesque. He was nowhere obscure, nor were his Tnr IJjc ,y ludfiuk Ih-nison M.iurue, I, 250. J.oiul., 1S84. 2 Life of Lord Ifoii;^hlon, \, 210, It ; ;i:i ^ !« -i I- ■ '?« I 1 XXIV LECTURES ON HEROES II i ^ sentences peculiarly constructed, though some of them, no doubt, savored of his peculiar manner." ^ The success of the course was most unmistakable. At the last, Carlyle had some of his audience, ladies undoubtedly, weeping ; others, undoubtedly men, wanted to give him a dinner to express their sense of obligation ; but he declined the honor. More lasting than "the glory of Portman Square" was the net result in money, nearly 300 guineas. The London season and the cosmic programme for 1838 included, as two of their chief events, the coronation of the girl queen of nineteen and the lectures of Thomas Carlyle. Of this course, we know more than of any other, except Heroes. Thackeray, we may be almost sure, attended the first lecture, and wrote the fine compliments in the Times, which pit ised Carlyle so much. Leigh Hunt reported him in the Examiner, after a fashion that pleased him much less. Instead of giving a clear summary of what was said, Hunt argued in print with the lecturer and disputed his various propositions. The most characteristic thing is his disallow- ing Carlyle's praise of thrift, after borrowing two of Carlyle's hard-earned guineas. The Examiner reports have a distinct value and interest ; but there is an even fuller account to be had. Sterling laughed with Caroline Fox over the ladies who attended Carlyle's lectures and took notes, not of the uioughts, but of the dates, " and these all wrong "; but there was another taker of notes at this course, who worked to some purpose. In 1892, Professor J. Reay Greene edited, with preface and notes, " Lectures on the History of Literature Delivered by Thomas Carlyle April to July, 1838." ^ The account the editor gives of them is not quite clear ; we would gladly ^ Life of George Ticknor, sub dat. June i, 183S. * Significant extracts had been published, in an article by Professor Dowden, in The Nineteenth Century, April, 188 1. INTRO D UC TION XXV know more. Apparently they were taken down in shorthand, by Mr. Thomas Chisholm Anstey, a Roman Catholic bar- rister, who became M. P. for Youghal. How the manuscript travelled to India is not explained ; and no notice is taken of an instructive statement of Mrs. Carlyle's in regard to it. Writing to her husband on Sept. lo, 1838, she says of Sartor Resartus, then in its first English edition : " The individual most agog about it seems to be the young Cath- olic whose name, I now inform and beg you to remember, is Mr. T. Chisholm Anstey. He sat with me one forenoon, last week, for a whole hour and a half, rhapsodising about you all the while; a most judicious young Catholic, as I ever saw or dreamt of. . . . He has written an article on you for the ' Dublin Review.' which is to be sent to me as soon as published, and the Jesuits, he says, are enchanted with all they find in you I told Mr. Chisholm Anstey I could not give him the lecture-book as I was copying it. ' You copying it ! ' he exclaimed in enthusiasm ; ' indeed you shall not have the toil ; I will copy it for you ; it will be a pleasure to me to write them all a second time ! ' So you may give him the ten shillings ; for he actually took away the book, and what I had done of xi, par 7'i-e force." ^ From this, it is reasonable to infer that Mr. Anstey had written out his notes in full, shown them to Carlyle, who wanted to keep them and employed Ivs wife as copyist. This proceeding throws light on Ca.Iyle's publication of Heroes. With the exception of the ninth lecture, which Mr. Anstey was too ill to attend, these reports are complete. All Carlyle's lectures occupied an hour, seldom ...ore; and, compared with Iferoes, these of '38 fill only half the space in print. They are valuable for aiding us to understand the last course ; and, as showing the difference between Carlyle the speaker and Carlyle the writer. 1 Z. and M. I, 107. 11 il 4Wj i ■Ml • !! XXVI LECTURES OJV HEROES \ Between the meagre reports of Leigh Hunt and the fuller accounts of Anstey there are curious and significant dis- crepancies. For instance, Anstey makes Carlyle call Philip of Macedon " a strong active man " ; while Hunt says " a managing, diagrammatic man." The merest tyro can decide which is the real Carlylese. Again, Anstey reports Carlyle as saying in regard to the Greeks : " They recognised a des- tiny, a great dumb black power, ruling time, which knew nobody for its master, and in its decrees was as inflexible as adamant, and every one knew it was there." Hunt's version is : " The Greek religion which he looks upon as originating in the "worship of heroes" ultimately "shaped by allegory " with Destiny at the back of it (a great dumb black divinity that had no pity on them, and they knew not what it was, only that it pitied neither gods nor men)." Here, it seems to me. Hunt comes nearer to what was actually uttered. Instances might be multipucd to show that Anstey's reports must be taken with great caution as representing the very words spoken by Carlyle in 1838. This was the longest of the four courses, and the best paid ; and by the end of the year Carlyle was looking forward to a third course, which should bring him "board-wages" for another twelvemonth. In April, 1839, he was able to tell Emerson that he was richer than he had been for ten years ; but, though he was no longer driven to it by poverty, he was again to lecture. His subject was chosen: "The Revolutions of xModern Europe." The place was again Portman Square ; the hour, from three to four on Wednesdays and Saturdays, begin- ning on the first Wednesday in May; the number of the lectures, six.' 1 As to the sul)jects of the lectures, I have been .ihle tn find little beyond Carlyle's own statement th?t Protestantism, Puritanism, and the French Revolution were to have two apiece. See E.-Corr. I, 230. INTkOnuCTWX xxvu Of this course we know tlie least of all. Leigh Hunt was very late for the first lecture, because his omnibus ran a waiting race with another ; and he reports it in one vajjue sentence. The second, on "Protestantism. Faith in the IJible, Luther, Knox, (iustavus Adolphus." he reports at some length ; ' and one of Mrs. C:arlyle's lively letters ''■ deals with some of its aspects. The two are worth compar- ing. Hunt notices his manner and its effect on his audience. "There is frequently a noble homeliness, a passionate sim- plicity and familiarity of speech in the language of Mr. Carlyle, which gives startling effect to his sincerity, and is evidently received by his audience, especially the fashionable part of it (as one may know by the increased silence), with a feeling that would smile if it could, but which is fairly dashed into a submission, grateful for the novelty and the excitement by the hard force of the very blows of truth." One of the passages which had this effect was Carlyle's denunciation of the degenerate Papacy. The heartiness of the speaker's convictions, uttered in simple, truthful words, had full weight with his audience. " E\ cry manly face seems to knit its lips, out of a severity of s\mpathy, whether it would or no; and all the pretty church-and-state bonnets seem to think through all their ribbons." Hunt was plainly a most sympathetic listciK r. sensitive to moods and impres- sions. One paragraph of commLndaticm and summary is given to the account of Luther, which shows much the same treatment as in Heroes. Mrs. Carlyle is not concerned with the matter of the lecture, but with its effect. Writing to old Mrs. Carlyle at Scotsbrig on May 6, she says: "Our ;,econd lecture 'trans pired ' yesterday, and with surprising success — literally surprising, for he was imputing the profound attention with ^ The F.xaminn-, Smulay, May \i, iSjrj. 2Z. a W.J/. I, 112. XXVIU LECTURES ON HEROES 1 : I*- Ml I which the audience listened, to an awful sympathising expec- tation on their part of a momentary break-down, when all at once they broke into loud plaudits, and he thought they must all have gone clean out of their w.ts ! But, as does not happen always, the majority were in this instance in the right, and it was he that was out of his wits to fancy himself making a stupid lecture, when the fact is he really cannot be stupid if it were to save his iife." She did not think he was talking his best; but she heard "splendid," "devilish fine," "most true" "heartily ejaculated," on all sides. "The most practical good feature in the business was a considerable increase of hearers — even since last day ; the audience seems to me larger than last year, and even more distinguished." As in the days of Coleridge, the whole street was blocked with carriages of people who maintained servants in livery. The English aristocracy are the most open to light of any class Carlyle has to do with, thinks Mrs. Carlyle; and gives an instance of their openness to truth. "Even John Knox, though they must have been very angry at him for demolishing so much beautiful archi- tecture, which is quite a passion with the English, they were quite willing to let good be said of, so that it were indis- putably true. Nay, it was in reference to Knox that they first applauded yesterday." The whole letter shows sincere elation at her husband's success. Hunt's notice of the third lecture,' the first on Puritanism, is a mild rebuttal of Carlyle's special pleading for Cromwell. To blame Charles for deception, while protesting that Crom- well could not get on without it, seemed inconsistent. Hunt is very careful to qualify his disapproval, in such a way as this : " Had Mr. Carlyle taken pains to draw a distinction ho might doubtless have done so." Or else he softens his remon- strance with compliments like this. " Not that Mr. Carlyle 1 The Examiner, .Sunday, May 12, 1839. INTRODUCTION XXIX is ultimately intolerant to this victim of i father's king-craft and the rising light of the age. He never is to anything in a hard inhuman sense. He is too wise and kind a man. Hut as we have just observed, we think it due from him to his audience to explain himself on occasions like these, and not to run the chancr of their going away with mistaken impressions." The chief impressions which Hunt himself carried away from this lecture were Carlyle's freedom from prejudice in depicting Puritanism, " which would have made ■3 world a planet all over brambles," his portraiture of I'rynne and Laud, his doing more than justice to Strafford, and his complete silence on Vane and Milton. He notes that the audience seems to increase at every lecture; and (liiotes characteristic sentences, such as " iJoth sides mean something that is right in all battles" and "All revolutions are the utterance of some long-felt truth in the minds of men." It is plain that Carlyle is once more traversing well-trodden ground. The Examiner for Sunday, May 19, contains a brief apology for omitting to notice the lectures, and promises to report them next week, when they are over. The promise is well kept, and the report given is one of Hunt's best. }{e again apologizes for having missed the greater part of the fourth lecture, but he preserves the title, " The English Restoration, Europe till 1789, Voltaire and Arkwright." His recollections are hazy. The lecturer, for one thing, broke up •' the wretched administration in France under Cardinal I)u Bois, like so much tinsel paper, or an old bonnet, or rather like an old hair-powder box in which the powder was poisoned, — at once the lightest and guiltiest thing in the world." He defends Voltaire against Carlyle's charge of being " a mere scoffer " by adducing his " sympathies with the pleasurable and the good-natured," and mentions his service to the Calas family. He does not deny that Voltaire I. m w ^% f ^f" h •? - S'» ': ■■ ! U h' \ ■ :t .■ R " ■ ■ '^ ^ f ' 1 t ? ;!i I '. *5 1 V » tI Our lecturer was not a man to brag : but the facts are almost too strong for his nodesty. His grudging admissions are set in their true light by his best critic, his kt-en. clear-headed wife. Writing to his mother, there is no re.ison why siie should restrain her pride. " The last lectur. was indeed the most splendid he ever delivered, and the people were all in a heart-fever over it ; on all sides of me people, who did not know me, and might therefore be believed, were expressing their raptures audibly. One man (a person of originally large fortune, which he had got through in an uncommon way, namely, in acts of benevolence) was saying, ' He 's a glorious fellow ; I love the fellow's very faults,' etc., etc. ; while another answered, ' Aye, faith, is he ; a fine, wild, chaotic cnap,' and so on all over the whole room. In short 1 C.L.L. I, 171. corrected. ts'rK'O'HTcrioN XXXV we left the concern in :i sort of whirlwind of 'glory,' not without 'bread.'" She notes a carriage with the Royal arms and liveries, which had hroujjht a court-official to I'ortnian Square ; and, in s ul contrast to her triumph, the widow of Edward Irving sitting opposite in her weeds. As a girl, she had loved Irving herself: this woman had taken him from her ; Irving had had his brief day of glory, and now he was beyond it all. The letter ends sadly ; the sun his gone under a cloud. Kven clearer testimony to the success of this course is given by C'arlyle himself, uncon- sciously. Ten day s after it was ended, he wrote to Emerson much as he had to his brother ; but he has discovered that public speaking is an art, and he thinks of learning it by practice. "Repeatedly it has come into my head, that [ should go to America this very Fall and beiecture you from Xorth to South till I learned it." ' This shows how Emer- son's invitation still tempted Carlyle; and the temptation lasted until the publication of Heroes. America remained Carlyle's Carcassonne. II These three courses were I.ut the three steps by which he ascended to his last and greatest triumph, the course On We/yies. Every year he gained in mastery over himself and bis subject and the art of public speaking ; every year his kudience was larger, more distinguished, and more enthu- liistic. His last course was his best, and he forsook his ' new profession " at the very moment of his greatest success. h- looked upon his performance on the platform as a ' mixture of prophecy and play-acting " ; felt the taint of [ismcerity which seems to haunt oratory ; and, as he could Ive without it, he gave it up. ' K.-Corr. I, 252. W:.= \ i XXXVl LECTURES ON HEROES ■I 1 ('!■' Heroes took shape in Carlyle's mind within four days, between the 27th of February and the 2d of March, 1840. On the first date he writes to his brother John : " I am beginning seriously to meditate my Coiine of Lectures, and have even, or seem to have got, the primordium of a subject in me, — the' not nameable as yet." On the second date he is able to give the course in outline : " My subject for Lecturing on ought hardly yet to be named ; lest evil befall it. I am to talk about gods, prophets, priesis, kings, poets, teachers {six sorts of men) ; and may probably call it ' On the Heroic' Odin, Mahomet, Cromwell, are three of my figures ; I mean to show that ' Heroworship never ceases,' that it is at bottom the main or only kind of worship." On All Fools' Day he calls on Emerson to sympathize with him on his " frightful outlook " in having to give a course of lectures '"On Heroes and Hero-Worship,' — from Odin to Robert Burns " ; and on April 8, he announces the title in its pres- ent form, except for one word, and calls it " a great, deep, and wide subject, if I were in heart to do it justice." Just how he prepared for this course has never been made quite clear. Neither Mr. Traill ' nor Mr. Gosse,^ his latest editors, explain the matter, or establish the relation between the spoken lectures and the written book. That it is now possible to do both is due to the courtesy of Mr. Alexander Carlyle, who has made for the present tdition extracts from his great kinsman's unpublished letters, which place the matter beyond a doubt. Froude gives a hint, quoting from Carlyle's own journal for April 23, 1840: "I have been throwing my lectures upon 1 Thomas Carlyle, On J /•.■rocs, Ifero-lVors'p, and the Heroic in History (Centenary ed.), Introduction. Lond., 1S97. ■^ On J/cr,:cs and Hrro-lVc-'-'hif' these limits. Anstey's reports give about twenty ' The la.t and best lecture of the 18.59 course lasted an hour and a l>aif. See C.L.L.l, 171. ''^' Uv LECTURES ON HEROES ',i V !r: lii % i< i pages to each lecture; but each lecture on Heroes fills more than forty. Even if Anstey did not catch or record every word, the difference is striking. But while insisting on the differences between the book and the lectures, it is possible to make too much of them. The two modes of expression, the lecture and the essay, of neces- sity, differ widely ; * the " emendations and additions " were many ; and it is plain that there were omissions ; but in both the general plan is the same; that is plain from the reports of Caroline Fox, and whenever there is the chance of comparing the versions of different hearers. The deliv- erances at Portman Square served as framework, which he built upon and filled in and finished. In the Carlylean chronology, 1840 is the year of Heroes. Eight months out of the twelve went to the shaping of it. In February came the conception, the serious meditation of the course, when Carlyle seemed to himself to have attained to the primordium of a subject. By the end of March he records his intention of writing his lectures down, " and then flaming about over both hemispheres with them." That is, he has in mind Emerson's invitation, now six years old, and composes his course with an eye to the American platform. In April he was splashing down, in paragraphs, as fast as he could write, his rough first draft, then cutting it up and stringing the slips into orderly succession. May, from the fifth to the twenty-second, was taken up with the delivery of the lectures, and at the end of the month the work of writing them out began. The first two were com- posed in June. About the twenty-third of August, Carlyle writes that ten more days will see him at the end of his wearisome task, and, by the end of September, he is able to announce to Emerson that the work is done. " On the whole, I have written down my last course of lectures, and 1 Sc. Kuskin, Sesame and Lilies, (second) Preface,io^xxKV paragraph. Mi* INTRODUCTION Iv shall probably print them ; that will be the easiest way of lecturing in America." But even earlier, he had given up the project of a lecture tour abroad. His success had been so complete that he had thought of perfecting himself in the art of public speaking and repeating the course outside of London. " In the fire of the moment I had all but decided on setting out for America this autumn and preaching far and wide like a very lion there. . . . Thus did I mean to preach, on " Heroes, and Hero- Worship, and the Heroic"; in America too. Alas the fire of determination died away again : all that I did resolve was to write these Lectures down, and in some way promulgate them farther." * In the last quarter of the year various attempts were made to pub- lish them, but without success. Saunders and Ottley offered ;^5o lor the book, while Fraser would definitely offer nothing. Carlyle learned, with surprise, that a man might be famous and yet not be regarded favorably by booksellers. His mood was one of indifference ; he was reading for his Cromwell, and he felt that, if the book were worthy, it would sooner or later see the light.* What terms Fraser did offer at last I have not discovered, but an edition of a thousand copies appeared with his im- print, during the first quarter of 1841. By May 21, he paid Carlyle ;^i5o for Heroes and Sartor, which the recipient regards as a miracle.^ The cdttio prineeps is a comely duo- decimo, plain in type, strong in paper, modest in binding, at all points such a vesture for his thought as the Lover of the V'erities would not be ashamed to own. Through Emerson's brotherly kindness, America had been for Carlyle, El Dorado. It was through him alone that Sartor, the Miscellanies, the French Revolution had been published in the United States, ' E.Corr. I, 319 f. July 2, 1S40. ■' The first edition of Heroes sold for los. 6d. foi 9s. 2 C.L.L. I, 214. the second and third .■^jir I' i tf- if M ::; ivi LECTURES ON HEROES to the greater glory of their author, and to the plenishing of his purse. Naturally, Carlyle hoped to profit by this book also, and sent the advanced sheets to Emerson by one of the early Cunarders, to be bound up and sold, as the other works had been, for his benefit. But his growing fame was a distinct disadvantage in the brave days of old, before international copyright was thought of. Let Emerson tell the tale.* " I am sorry to find that we have been driven from the market by the New York Pirates in the affair of the Six Lectures. The book was received from London and for sale in New York and Boston before my last sheets arrived by the Columbia. Appleton, in New York, braved us and printed it, and furthermore told us that he intends to print in future everything of yours that shall be printed in London." And he begs his friend to send him a duplicate manuscript of the next book he intends to publish, and promises, in that event, " to keep all Appletons and Corsairs whatsoever out of the lists." He mentions, besides, a curi- ous instance of Carlyle's popularity. " The New York news- papers print the book in chapters, and you circulate for six cents per newspaper at the corners of all the streets in New York and Boston, gaining in fame what you lose in coin." * The early bibliography of Heroes has been up to this time obscure. Even Mr. Anderson, with the resources of the British Museum to draw on, makes no mention of the second and third editions, in the most complete bibliography of Carlyle yet published.* Of the early American editions 1 ErCorr. I, 348 f. April 30, 1841. * E.-Corr. I, 349. April 30, 1841. * Garnett's Thomas Carlyle, flreat Writers Series, Appendix. It would be a boon to all Carlyleans if Dr. S. A. Jones, of Ann Arbor, could be induced to publish his bibliography of Carlyle. It contains at least a hundred items more than Anderson's. INTNODVCTION Ivii and their relation to the English editions, there is, to the best of my knowledge, no printed information. It will, therefore, not be amiss to offer some explanations. Two first and two second editions of the same book, to say noth- ing of the one ' third ' edition appearing four years before a second ' third ' edition, are rather puzzling. Appleton's reprint, the first American edition, appeared very shortly after the original London edition. It is also a duodecimo, much the same in appearance as the honest book ; imitating the title-page, but adding to the name of the author the names of two of his best known works. The French Revolution and Sartor Resartus. Carlyle found the copy sent to him, " smart on the surface ; but printed altogether scandalously." Towards the end of 1841, Fraser died, and Carlyle transferred his business to the firm which still prints his works, Chapman and Hall. The second English edition was called for in the following year. It was a tim. of distress for Carlyle. Mrs. Welsh, his wife's mother, died in March, and he was obliged to spend some time at Templand, winding up her estate. Mrs. Carlyle was for a long time prostrated by the blow, and probably Carlyle had not the time to give the book the thorough revision which he gave later. He was very sensi- tive as to all printer's errors ; and the careless printing of the American pirates angered him more than their high-handed spoiling of his goods. In this second edition, some slips in matters of fact were correctec and some interesting additions made.^ The largest change was in the passage relating to Cromwell's vision, on page 243, which was twice revised before it suited the author. The Cromw jll pr.rt of Lecture VI bears .>97- '^' IVlll LECIUKES ON HEROES H ' upon the Letters and Speeches. An unauthorized "seccnd edition " appears with Applcton's imprint in the same year. It is not the same as the first edition, but is set up by a different printer,' and conta'ns a greater number of pages, all of which goes to prove that the American as well as the English " first editions " were exhausted within the year of publication. Both American editions deserve Carlyle's abuse for bad printing, and both take liberties with his text. It may interest students of American spelling to know that this "second edition "of Appleton'sis moreold-fashionedthan Car- lyle, correcting ' chemistry ' to ' chymistry,' and resolving his revolutionary ' forever ' into the two words of our rude fore- fathers. I have by me also an American "third edition," so-called, of this year, bearing the imprint " Cincinnati : Published by U. P. James, No. 26 Pearl St." This is simply Appleton's second edition, with another title-page, which bears, however, Appleton's cut of the Aldus dolphin and anchor, with the proud motto ' Aldi Discip. Americ' The real third edition did not appear until 1846. In that year, Chapman and Hall published Heroes in a small, handsome, nine-shilling edition, a well-made book in all respects. This, Carlyle had leisure to revise carefully ; and the text is prac- tically the same as that of the present edition. At some later period, he broke up his long paragraphs into short ones, and illustrated the agglutinative theory of language by dropping; the hyphen in words he had joined by this tie, while other people still keep them asunder ; for example, ' such like ' is first 'such-like' and then 'suchlike.' This love of hyphens grew upon him, for in these first three editions, 'widely-distant,' ' shining-down,' etc., are still distinct words. None of these editions contains either the summary or index. The third American edition was issued also in 1846, by Wiley & Putnam, 1 The first American edition was set up by II. Ludwig, 72 Vesey St., and the second by F. C. Gutierrez. INTRODUCTION lu in their " Library of Choice Reading," by an honorable arrangement with the author.' Four other English editions appeared during Carlyle's lifetime. The fourth and last separate edition appeared in 1852 ; and the three others, in the collected editions, known as the " Collected Works " (1856-1858), bound with Sartor Jiesartns, the "Library" (1869-1871), and the "People's" (1871-1874). In the " People's Edition," Heroes has been selling for more than twenty years at the rate of 5000 copies per annum, faster than most novels. Of the various editions since his death, both in England and in the United States, I am unable to give here a complete account. Since the expiration of the copyright, the separate editions swarm. Few books written in the first half of the nineteenth century still live, fewer still have been more widely diffused. IV " Nothing which I have ever done pleases me so ill. They have nothing new, nothing that to me is not old. The style of them requires to be low-piiched, as like talk as possible." In this, his private view of Heroes, Carlyle sums up and forestalls much later criticism. He was not easily pleased with men or things, with himself, or his work. In Sartor there were, in his opinion, only some ten pages "rightly fused " ; the article on Scott was " a long rigmarole," "deserving instant fire-death," and Heroes, "a wearisome ' On the reverse of the title is printed " Imprimatur. This Book, • Heroes and Hero-Worship,' I have read over and revised into a cor- rect form for Messrs. Wiley & Putnam, of New York, who are hereby authorised, they and they only, so far as I can authorise them, to print ;i!id vend the samf> in the I'nifcd States. Thomas Carlyle." For the stdry of the negotiations with tliis firm, see E.-Corr. I, 1 19 ff. In spite of Carlyle's care, it is not impeccable and contains such misprints as ' Woutan ' for ' Wuotan ' twice, and ' Neutonic ' for ' Teutonic' -^'% ii vm i; 1^ LECTURES ON HEROES 'i :^ir- 1 1 :f it' triviality." He revised this verdict when he read the book in print ; but this first impression dcst-rves closer scrutiny. From the beginning, the style of Carlyle was a rock of oflfence to the critics ; and their remonstrances or abuse forced him to consider it. His manner of expression was unique ; it had grown with his growth ; it was not a coat to be put on and off, to be cut and changed, at the demands of fashion ; it was his skin, in which he must live and die. In Heroes he had taken thought of this matter, and worked to attain certain ends. "The style requires to be low- pitched, as like talk as possible." This requirement he had striven to satisfy. That is, Carlyle's ordinary style, the genuine Carlylese, was, for once, consciously modified by the author. In my examination of what is generally recognized as Carlyle's distinctive manner, the manner of S,irior Kcsnrlus,'' the chief marks of it were found to be the constant impres- sion of an audible voice, the wealth of allusion, and love of the concretely picturesque. Next in importance were three other traits, the .stern, strenuous tone of that voice sounding through it, the tone of one with whom Ernst ist ;. to hear through all the lines, as unc re.»ds in his qui. Si i , the hijr'i, earnest Annandaic voice barkin- a- • !)arkp 1 It 'ho breathless Londoners, at Wil 'rrt|),,n ■ 1 .TL. The words are winged words. Lit ' I ! :y ring in our ears and haunt the fin.' of tli - 'n ; they insist on the memory, and will not be p '. asifl'. Carlyle achieves in Heroes a difficult feat, the artistic ren dering ..f oral speech. For these are not really six essays, but six glorified versions of the six lectures, in something like the ideal form Carlyle would have liked to give them, had time and the art of public speaking been fully at his comm-ind. Now, all these things, restraint in the use of allusion and metaphor on the one hand, and the approach to the diffuse, direct, plain manner of oral speech on the other, make for popularity and help to explain why the book sells better, year after year, than most novels. In Heroes the strong wine of Carlyle's style is allayed and softened tu the general taste, after the fashion of the temperate Greek ,. Nothing distinctive is given up ; the minor peculiarities are ail retained. The triadic structure is perhaps even more protiounced than in Sartor, as it is a favorite device of orator and preacher for securing emphasis and a satisfy- ing rotundity of tone. The triads may be threefold groups ot adjectives, as ' The Pilgrim's Progress is an Allegory, and a beautiful, just and serious one'; or of nouns, as 'mere quackery, priestcraft and dupery ' ; or of nouns and their wmoiwcrioN IxiU adjectives, as ' sheer falsehoofi, idle fables, allegory afore- thought.' These are hy f;ir the most common. More rarely the triads consist of .absolute phrases, as • Hattles with the Koreish and Heathen, quarrels among his own people, backslidings of his own wild heart ' ; or of present parti- ciples, as ' fighting, counselling, ordering.' ( )ccasionally the verbs heap up according to this rule ; for instance, ' I he number Twelve . . . which could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six,' where the last verb ts not really needed. And .^gain, three sentences m.iy form a symmetrical group, •IS, • what was done, what is doing, what will be done.' 'I'his triadic structure is modified by lengthening or varying one of the three members; and s«imetimes an entire passage m.iy be all -cted by it. In the short portr.iit of Dante in black and white, there are five tn.ds. The picturesque cipitals are hire, though not sown with as free .i hand as in S.irtor. Only important words arc so singled out. Allied to this is the trick of making proper nouns plural, .u denote vividly things like them ; for instance, 'delivtring Calases,' 'its Councils of Trebisond, Councils of Trent, Athanasiuses, iJantes, Luthers' 'our own HIakes and N' >ns,' 'the Shakspeares, the Goethes,' ' Sh.ikspeares, Danios, Goethes'; but such plurals are noi frequent, these live being the only examples iu the first lecture. .Vor is the hyphenation of words, with the corresponding shift of icceti' quite so frequent ; but it occurs and has its uses. In such phrase as 'that strange island Iceland, - burst-urr the geol- ogists tell us, by fire,' the hyphen is necessary : '■ burst-up* conveys a shade of Carlylean meaninjr. whic' • hurst up would not convey. The rhymes and all era .ons are no; many ; but there are plenty of quotations i ..n himself. One distinctive and peculiar mark ' Carlyle's style, both here and elsewhere, is his free use <.f the subjunctive, especially of -were' and 'had' without tie sign of the I Ixiv LECTURES ON HEROES Ht i Ml ill: subjunctive ; for example, ' That great mystery of Time, were there no other,' etc. ; ' much would have been lost, had not Iceland been burst-up from the sea.' Sometimes they are combined with more usual forms ; as, ' Were there no books, any great man would grow mythic'' ; ' Had this lasted. Lope would have grown,' etc. He even writes ' let him live where else he like, in what pomps and prosperities he like.' " The style requires to be low-pitched, as like talk as pos- sible." By keeping this in mind, by refraining from too great elaboration of his first sketch, Carlyle succeeded in making his style more popular, more readable ; but he went too far. In some respects the style of Heroes is pitched too low, and is too much like talk. Carlyle's work has stood the test of time ; the years have not impaired its solidity. The battle of Leuthen from Frcil- erkk is the best text-book the German military schools can put into the hands of young officers ; the pettiness and the futility of the younger historians' attacks upon the French Revolution is one of Mr. Saintsbury's constant joys ; ^ and even the boldest iconoclast has not raised his hammer against the Cromwell. In spite of its name, the texture of Sartor is closely woven and firm ; but it is not so with Heroes. Compared with the masterpieces, it is almost flimsy. It is an ungrateful task to discover the .skirts of the master ; but a critical edition is like lago, nothing if not critical. Wherever errors in matter of fact have been dis- cernible, they have been brought to book in note or various reading, and, as far as possible, corrected. The curious may find them in the proper places; they are not few, but they shall not be mustered and paraded together by the present editor. Comparison with the earlier texts shows that Carlyle, like any other man working at speed, would blunder now and then. He was capable of misquoting, ut ^ See Corrected Impressions. INTKOD UC r/OJV Uv mistaking one word for another, of confusing Plato with Aristotle, and ' euphuism ' with ' euphemism.' He was not in advance of his age, in his knowledge of Norse, for instance ; he is fond of convenient etymologies, and supports and op- poses the fancies of Grimm in no scientific fashion. Some- times he fails in matter of fact. Most of these mistakes he corrected himself ; but some he overlooked, like his mis- direction of the Hegira. Besides, in repeating himself in his lectures from year to year, his memory played him a famil- iar but scurvy trick. Every one who gives a course of lec- tures knows how familiar material, by dint of frequent handling, loses its freshness, how the sharp angles and clear lines are worn down and worn out, until the fact which looks the same, and seems to be the same as of yore, has become by imperceptible degrees not the same. Carlyle worked fast, trusted to his memory, and did not take pains to verify every reference. The errors in matters of fact are not really important. They do not detract from the value of the book as a whole, or modify in any way its teaching. Hut there s another class of error which cannot be passed over so easily. Car- lyle was anything but a worshipper of use and wont ; and it is therefore not surprising that in Heroes he takes liber- ties with the code of usage we call English grammar. In an edition of this kind, intended chiefly for readers in their pupilage, when the authority of print is rarely questioned, it becomes a plain duty to note such deviations from rule. Intentionally pitching the style low, and trying to make it " as like talk as possible," Carlyle becomes colloquial. His Letters show that he was fond of the common illegiti- mate use of 'get'; and it frequently blemishes the text. Such examples as ' when one soul has . . . ji^ot its sin and misery left behind,' 'Luther could not get lived in honesty for it,' ' it will never rest till it get to work free,' can hardly H if E'lPi \m- i i. 1 :^ W' m ■ *•' m Hi Ixvi LECTURES ON HEROES ii be justified. He is fond of such expressions as ' this of,' 'that of,' 'the like' and 'suchlike'; for example, 'It has always seemed to me extremely curious this of Voltaire.' Although in general his force of phrase rivals Shakspere's, he is not always happy or exact in the use of single words ; for instance, 'it is competent to all men,' 'so I'-'cumstanced,' 'there is no vocation in them for singing it,' 'by which man works all things whatsoever.' From haste or carelessness, he is guilty at times of downright awkwardness, a disagree- able huddle of words, which he would not wait to set in fair order. Such collocations as * what the kind of thing he will do is,' ' the sure precursor of their being about to die,' ' till they had learned to make it too do for them,' ' It lies there clear, for whosoever will take his spectacles off his eyes and honestly, look to know ' must be surrendered to the literary executioner without a protest. How Carlyle would justify or defend them, I do xnA know. Even Johnson's defence of the way he defined ' pastern ' is barred him. Again, in hurried, eager speech, imperfections in the structure of the sentences may not only be forgiven, they may even be welcomed, as tokens of sincerity. The speaker is so intent upon his meaning that he will not stop to pick and choose his words, and build his sentences by rule. But when he sets forth his burning words in ordered and deliber- ate prose, he must submit to the laws that govern that method of expression. But these laws Carlyle, in Heroes, cannot, or, more probably, will not obey. The gerund-grinder finds, on laying the ordinary measuring rod of grammar to Carlyle's sentences, that many are, properly speaking, not sentences at all, but the unorganized material for sentences. There is inner coherence ; the meaning is clear ; but too often they are bundles of phrases from which sentences are made. Fur example, the third sentence of the first lecture, though con- veying a plain enough meaning, conforms to no grammatica 1 INTRODUCTION Ixvii definition : "A large topic ; indeed, an illimitable one • wide as Universal History." Such fragmentary, abrupt, irregular exclamatory sentences abound. Perhaps the climax in abrupt- ness IS the last sentence in Lecture V, on Burns. Of the nme sentences which make up the portrait of Dantes face and soul, four contain no verb, assert nothing. The picture will not out of the memory, and yet a fundamental law of usage is violated. The gerund-grinder feels his conventional world of grammar crumbling around him. It almost looks as if Macaulay were right about the London prentice. Jealous for the fame of the master, but still faith- ful to the craft whereby he has his living, the poor gerund- grinder falters where he firmly trod. He can only conclude that the laws of grammar are no more binding on genius than the laws of morality ; and that Carlyle's injuries to Priscian's head are to be condoned, like the great Goethe's amours passagens. Another form of apology suggests itself. Our author defended Mahomet, on good Goethean grounds namely, that restriction in one direction excuses greater indulgence on all other sides ; and the argument fits the ...atter in hand. Carlyle restricted himself on many sides • but he took his license in the fields of, — grammar. But all such blemishes are no more than spots upon the sun hardly seen by the unassisted eye, and in no way hindering the radiation of light and life In Heroes the series of lectures, as well as in each sepa- rate discourse, the plan is simplicity itself. Ruskin's lee tares, on the other hand, are elaborate. His subject is tjradually unfolded, touch upon touch, surprise after surprise sometimes the main theme is apparently abandoned mid- way, and the speaker turns passionately to something more «1 • r- 1! Ixviii LECTURES OX HEROES \\ important, as in Kinds' Treasuries. Generally, he begins low in tone and rises in emotion from height to heifjht to tht final supreme lyrical appeal, as in Queens" Gardens. There is little or nothin?; of this " wanton heed " in Carlyle. His heroes are of six kinds, simply and solely because hi was booked to give two lectures a week for three weeks, half a dozen being a sort of sacred number in this respect. If he had been required to give seven lectures he might have included Heyne and Copernicus under the head of the Hero as Man of Science ; or if eight, he might have dared, in his ignorance of art, to discourse on Michael Angelo as the Hero-Artist. His classification is not supposed to be com- plete ; and it is nothing to say that he has left niches in hi> Pantheon unfilled, when he was strictly limited by such .i commonplace fact as the length of the lecture course, as established by convention. In the order of the lectures we are conscious of a descending scale ; the hero is first a divinity, then a prophet, then a rates, poet-prophet, then a reforming priest, then the man of lette'-s, who is both priest and poet, if necessary, and finally, in the words of Byron, The Hero sunk into a King. Such a plan may be called artificial, but it is as plain as a diagram. The same is true of each lecture. In the interests of the wayfaring man, apparently, Carlyle made a summary for this book ; but it is not really needed. There is nothing Emer- sonian about the plan of each division. In the phrase of the pulpit, each discourse falls naturally under three heads. First comes a general introduction ; the subject is put for- ward nakedly, without any artifice, or else the lecture is linked to the previous one by a brief recapitulation. In cases where the facts were not generally known, the proper preface is a luminous account of the hero's environment, tlie JNThODUCTION Ixix '(uintry and the people from which he sprang. Such a review would Ix- espet ialiy necessary in approaching Odin and Mahomet. Next in order is a brief account of the hero's life and labors. If the biographical facts are generally known, as in the case -if Siiakspere and Napoleon, or dis- creditable, as in the case of Rousseau, they are passed over lightly. Then in the third place, a characterization of the hero's activity, or a summing up of his achievement, or an explanation of his signili( ance, or, in the case of Cromwell and Mahomet, a warm-hearted defence of men misunder- stood, rounds out and ends the lecture. Two recent editf)rs of Jkrois, Mr. Edmund (Josse and Mr. H. I). Traill, feel compelled to adopt an apologetic or patron- izing air towards the book, for which the inaiics of Diogenes Tt'ufelsdrockh must feel grateful. Mr. Gosse finds a con- trast between the " squalid egotism " of Carlyle's character and the heroic doctrine he preached, though this opinion is not maintained until the end of his preface. It is time to enter a protest against this facile disparagement of a great man. His books may be bad or good ; his doctrines may l)e true or false ; but the man, Thomas Carlyle, deserves the respect of his kind. The main authority for his life is Froude. Xot only is his general view of Carlyle's character perverse and distorted, as of a "concave-convex mirror," but he cannot be depended on to tell the truth about the simplest fict; he cannot even copy a letter.' He has, however, the |)ul)lic ear and by means of a readable style has succeeded in blackening every blot in his friend's character. Kut in spite of all he has done, when all is known and after the ' See David Wilson, Mr. Fronde and Carlyle (Loud., 1S9S), for a (omplfte demolition of Froude, tiuniyh the book cannot be commended \vii:ioiu re.Neue fui lone and temper. It would be most desirable if I'lnfissor Norton would write the life of Carlyle, or at least publish his personal reminiscences of him. i i> 1' ? If ■11 ii ^Ef '' f U Hfiji^ M Ixx LECTURES ON HEROES \ 1 % I 1'*' worst has been said, the real c:arlyle is emerging, growing clearer and greater in sight of all who have eyes and will use them. As to Mr. (iosse's charge of want of heroism, of his life being a sad contrast to the high and passionate thought of Heroes, Carlyle's own words are his loudest accusers. Over against the wild and whirling words, set one action which puts them all to silence. Let a man who lives by his pen, and who puts his heart and his life-blood into his work lose the best manuscript he ever wrote, the unborn book that is to bring him fame and gold, as Carlyle lost the first volume of The French Rei'olution, and let him bear the loss as Carlyle did. He will then have earned the right to cast the first stone at him for want of fortitude, but not before. The judgment of the gentle natures, of men like Leigh Hunt,* of women like Mrs. Browning, who knew him closely at diff'"'ent periods of his life, is unanimous, and is at least to be set over against second-hand opinions, mere echoes from the most misleading of biographies. Mr. Traill is also disparaging and warns off intending readers. His short introduction shows uncertainty of touch, as well as downright error ; but it brings up objections to Heroes which at least deserve consideration. He goes so far as to admit that there are, " of course, some fine and strik- ing things in the volume " ; but he finds that the main idea has now become a commonplace. There is, besides, "endless repetition"; the subdivisions of the subject are "obviously 1 " Thomas Carlyle, one of the kindest and best, as well as most eloquent of men ... I believe that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than his faultfinding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human creature that looks suffering and loving and sincere." Leigh Huni, Autobiography, III, 227-231. Lond., 1850. "All his bitterness is love with the point reversed" "You come to understand perfectly when you know him, that his bitterness is only melancholy, and his s^com sensibility." Letters of Mrs. Browning, II, 25, 27. Lend., 1897. rt INTRODUCTION Ixxi artificial " ; and " a sixfold classification of the various forms of the heroic . . . has only been accomplished by dint of varying the definition of the word." There is undoubtedly something in these charges, especially the last two counts in the indictment. Carlyle himself foresaw such an objec- tion ; he felt that the " shapes " his heroes " assume " are " immeasurably diverse " ; and he ascribed the immeasur- able diversity to the world's reception of them. Whether he proved his point, may be questioned. It is first necessary to examine the main idea of the book. The theory of Heroes is as simple as the plan ; the main idea is in Hume. In his discussion of polytheism, the great sceptic says : " The same principles natu rally deify mort als, supe rior in power, cou rage, or understanding, zmd produce litT o-worshipT^ After dealing for three years as a public teacher with some of the most important " mortals superior in power, courage, or understanding," Carlyle, in meditating his fourth course, thinks that he has attained to some general truth regarding them, that he has discovered a new category, within which the most diverse personalities may be ranged. This generalization was reached, not by a process of reason- ing, experiment, deduction, but by, apparently, a flash of insight, which, though it came suddenly, had been long in preparation. The seed-thought had been lying in his mind, unregarded for years. In his essay, C(W//f V Works {1^,2,2), he quotes several long extracts from the work of a " continental humorist " called Teufelsdrockh, in whose book, Die Kleider, Ihr Wcrden mid JVirken, is to be found a chapter, " On the <;reatness of Great Men." None of the passages quoted are t(j be found, in the form there taken, in the completed Sartor, l)ut they may well be parts of the rejected Fraser article, which was afterwards expanded into that famous book. l!ut whether the extracts are what they pretend to be, or arc made for the occasion, they contain Heroes in embryo.* 1 Essays, Coethe''s Works, III, i6o. w Ixxii LECTURES ON HEROES \m\\ ri III! I' ' I* i I 'II \ \i 1 1 li " And now," continues the Professor, ..." is there not still in the world's demeanour towards Great Men, enough to make the old practice of Hero-worship intelligible, nay sig- nificant? Simpleton! I tell thee Hero-worship still con- tinues; it is the only creed which never and nowhere grows or ca n grow obsoje te." He repeats the idea in~his essay on Boswell,^ published in the same year. The devotion of Boswell to Johnson is "A cheeringji roof . . .that Loyal ty, Disciple^ihip, all that was e ver meant by Hero- Wors hip, lives perermiaLly jn the human^ b osom ." Hero-worship is undoubtedly an offshoot of Teufelsdrockhian philosophy. The chapter Or^^anic Filaments in Sartor sets forth clearly the main tenets of the cult. The primary thought is that the gre at man, of n ecessit y, calls for th the h<>mageo£hrs fellows. JT andjajnade^a hero, or demi-god, by tHem. The extended application of the word comes later. In 1840, " hero" meant, most probably, to nine Englishmen out of ten, a general officer who had served in the Peninsula, or taken part in the last great fight with Napoleon, and who dined year by year with " the Duke," at Apsley House, on the anniversary of Waterloo. To most people " hero " means simply^ sol djer " and i mplies a hum an^oiijj;;reafly da ring, o r greatly enduring. At the very least, the idea of moral excel- lence is attached to it ; and for good reason. To apply the term to a wretched impostor, the founder of a false religion, to two great poets, one an Englishman, the other an Italian, to a German monk, to a Scottish preacher who was rude to his queen, to an English Puritrn rebel who killed his king, to the pompous maker of a dictionary, to a miserable immoral Frenchman, to the Corsican fiend who nearly destroyed England, must have seemed at first I: h to Carlylc's public, monstrous or unintelligible. In A: rice, as we have seen, he had at least one hearer he could not * Essays, BoswelTs Life of Johnson, III, 82. INTKOnUCTlON Ixxiii convince. And Mj^. Traill, in thinking that the term " hero " can applj Mo Carlyle's six classes only by constantly varying its meani ng, is not alone. The critic who cavils at Carlyle's choice might well go further. If the sphere of heroism is widened to include the world of letters, for example, is not the " great and gallant Scott " a truer hero in that kind than Goethe, or Johnson, or Burns, or Rousseau ? Does he not meet the requirements of Greek tragedy, — the just man, for some flaw in character, struck down by Fate in his prosperity, and moving all who behold the spectacle to terror and pity > If Carlyle wanted a hero, surely "the old struggler," who was so true to the fighting Border blood he came of, and died like one of his own spearmen at Flodden, for honor, in the lost battle he would never own was lost, is a nobler figure than the com- fortable Ho/rath, the weak-willed gauger, the "dusty, irascible pedagogue," or the half-mad mate of the cretinous Levasseur. If " hero " implies ethical dignity and lofty bearing in time of deadliest trial, Scott deserves the title. And Carlyle has slight excuse for passing him by. He had been a witness of his great career, he had followed out the loving and masterly record of his life ; he had even the privilege that Tennyson longed for, he had seen the white-faced, shaggy figure limping down Princes Street. But the mountain stood too close to his own door; he lived too near it to see its true proportions. Dismissing, however, for the moment the notion that the little critics must necessarily be right, let us consider the startling alternative. Let us suppose, for the sake of argu- ment, tiiat Carlyle may not be wrong. There is at least a b.ire jjossibility that his conception of heroism may, after all, be greater than ours ; and that there may be a definition, otiier than the popular one, which will apply, that will embrace personalities "so immeasurably diverse." fh: Ixxiv LECTURES ON HEROES 11 1 11 I 1. Carlyle did not really live at Cheyne Row ; his home was in Teufelsdrockh's attic in the Wahni^asse, or higher still, on Pisgah. He lived upon the heights of life, and saw, from his eyrie, the vision of the world pass before him. It was an unsubstantial pageant, frail as the cloud wreath ; but it was also the manifestation of (lod, and the seer's mind was filled with unceasing wonder at the terror and splendor of it. He- saw more of it than we purblind dwellers in the valley, and he saw more clearly ; he had what we call insight. He has tried to tell us what he discerned to be the fact. Amonj; the undistinguished ant-like masses are "representative men,' "men of light and leading," "mortals superior in power, courage, or understanding." The history of mankind is the biography of these, its great men. Their moral character may be imperfect, their courage may not be the main thing : but they are " superior," and their fellows do follow them, admire and obey them to the point of worship. Carlyle simply states the fact. Is such a use of the term altogether wrong ? Take the most unlikely " h*ro " of all, poor demented Rousseau. All that ordinary eyes perceive is the moral squalor of his life ; but Carlyle sees further, and discerns the horrible anti-climax of such a life. The creature starves in a garret ; but his thought goes out from him and touches man after man and converts him ; he has fire enough in his brain to set France ablaze. The governors of the world could do nothing for him ; but he could not be hindered from sending a great many of them to the guillotine. Uy virtue of his " understanding," he, the one " superior " mortal, wrought on his fellow-mortals to do this thing. In their hero-worship, they offered human sacrifices. For a clear definition, we have, as usual, to go to France. As early as 1850, Emile Monte'gut framed one which is worth consideration. "Heroes," he says, "are those men who draw up into themselves and concentrate the qualities and INTtiODVCTION Ixxv thoughts of masses of men, who sum up an epoch or create it, ;ind so render themselves immortal by making themselves the masters of their tin»e."' Carlyic's henjes are all "mas- ters of thtir time." It is hard to see to which of them this definition does noi apply, and why " hero," in this sense, may not be regarded as a lawful extension of the idea, as it pre- sented itself first to Carlyle's mind in the phrase of Hume. It is not so far removed from the popular idea of the hero, the soldier soul, greatly daring or enduring greatly. Courage is an outstanding trait in almost all. Even Rousseau must have needed resolution, before he . . . (i.isird his angry heart Against the desolations of ll>e world. .Nor is the idea of moral excellence omitted ; Carlyle's com- prehensive term for it is sincerity. This, then, is the central thought of the book. The corol- laries are perhaps more open to question. Not only were these "diverse-looking'' characters all heroic, but they were all of the same essential stuff ; and that essence is sincerity. "Sincerity," in the Carlylean sense, implies superior insight. These ''heroes " did really see into the heart of things, and they acted " sincerely " on the conviction thereby produced. Hy this, thj!Y_m oved and moulded whole masses of th e r a^ej__and left th^ mark upon their time. Sincerity is hi s^reat theme . There was sincerity in'paganism, sin- cerity in Mohammedanism, in the doctrine of Rousseau, i n Naooleo n's- earlv simnnrt of the pri nciples of the Revo - l ution.^ That the " hero " might have taken any shape, that the warrior might have been a poet, and the poet ' " Les individus qui toncentrent et absorlient en eux les qualites et les pensees des masses, qui riisument toute une epoque ou qui la creent, tt (|ui se font ainsi immortels en se faisant les maitres du temps." Rr.tii- des Deux MonJci, p. 722, 1850. It Ixxvi LKCTUttES ON HEKOES \ f a statesman, is a harder saying. Curlyie says he mi^^fit ; and there is much virtue in the word ; it certainly leaves ample r(X)ni and verge enough for possibility. The versa- tile men of the Renaissance might be brought fcjrward in support of this position. If any one wishes to insist that the hero must have been what he was and nothin-: else, it is a pretty quarrel, but it cannot be settled by a sentence or two in a preface. Another cardinal doctrine is that "hero-worship,'" this reverence for "mortals superior in pow er, cou i age. or understanding " exists always and eve rywhe re. In proof, he chooses his " heroes " from widely different ages, races, and religions. In the sixty years that have elapsed since the lectures were given, such men as Kossuth, Garibaldi, Gladstone, Lincoln, Hismarck art- further proofs that the history of races is to be read in tht biographies of their great men. Another basal idea was not new. It had been uttered by him in many shapes before, and was, perhaps, the deepest of his convictions. This was the unreality of the things seen. He felt not only that the things that were seen were temporal, but that they were spectral, the mere shadow of a vast hidden Unnamable Reality, to which old-fashiontd people had no hesitation in giving a name. This is not with him a literary pose, an effective philosophy for the purposes of book-making : it is his constant thought, alonc with hill and sky, among the crowd, in his pensive citadel. The thought runs through all his correspondence, giving it distinction and melancholy grace, and finds its most elo quent expression in the famous chapter on Natural Super naturalism in Sartor. It is, as he points out, a very old thought. It haunted him all his life. Closely allied to it is his conception of the cosmos, not as a vast whirligig, :i well-contrived, immeasurable orrery, but as a vital, chang '"g. growing unity ; not a machine, but a tree. A third IXTKOtnCTJOtV Ixxvii itnportaiit idea is that " Nature is a just umpire." This is not very unlike the more familiar formula, "survival of the titltst," which in turn is not unlike the old phrase about •ilje finger of (Jod in history." The Carlylean .statement that every system that was ever firmly held had an element of truth in it is more widely recognized since the theory of (Volution has been applied to the history of religion. In one respect, the true Carlylean doctrine of hero- worship has been much misunderstood. Mr. Traill speaks of Carlyle's *• exhortation to hero-worsh p." And the general iiijprgssM LJs that Ca; -lyle wish«j!s iis_tn wnrg^j p 1,;^ ti frTTi"i 1) y i mi tation, and it is uointed_oui that this is impoitsible or undesir.il)le. Carlyh- preaches'~no such absurdity. He insists on the necessity of sinc»rit>, and, for once an optimist, holds out the alluring prosp.-ci that all iiavc the power to be sincere, and so forming a .. 'ievin^ nation, a nation of heroes. Hut the notion that the ma^^s of man- kind must worship these heroes, by imitating them, by (loiuLj their deeds, is diametrically opposed to Carlyle's m.im thesis, that ih^UiistoixoLihj^raceJs the history of its great men. VI It is curious to notice how early the first aim and purpose of Heroes dropped out of sight. From the outset people accepted hero-worship " with open mouth and flashing eyes," says Mr. Gosse, as a new gospel. Maurice, to his disgust, found men " ranting and canting after Carlyle in all direc- tions." In other words, there was at once wide recognition of the ethical appeal in the book, but the first intention was not really ethical. Carlyle's aim, as set forth in his own words, was " to afford some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history." It is true that he speaks of "the divine relation . . . which at all times unites a Great Man to m Ixxviii LECTURES ON HEROES III II I i! M ) I \ ! Other men," and of the profit to be got by the company of the great, giving the idea the prestige of words borrowed from the story of the Transfiguration. But he wants, first and foremost, to interpret history and to force upon a theory a sixfold application. The value of history as the first requisite of culture is too well known to be insisted on. Mr. Mallock's pleasant argu- ment in The Ncth Republic leaves little to be added. History gives us background, perspective, prevents us from beinj; merely temporal people, living only in the present, and scj helps to form the broader, more open mind, which marks the man of true cultivation. There is, then, a great and mani- fest advantage in going to a teacher who professes to give us, not the flesh and outward coverings, much less the dry bones, of history, but the " very marrow " of it. If he is able to fulfill his large promises, he will not only shorten the time of learning most difficult lessons, especially if we come to him early in our intellectual rise and progress, but he will make us "lords of truth," by which we shall live and grow. Few things can be better worth knowing than the inner meaning of what the race has done upon this planet. As Carlyle reads history he finds that the " marrow " of it is the heroism of the " mortals superior in power, courage, cjr understanding." This he advances, not with hesitation as a working hypothesis, but confidently as a final generaliza tion. Even if it be granted that it is only a working hypoth esis, the history of every department of human knowledge is largely an accoynt of excellent hypotheses, which served their day and helped to advance the science one sta;;e further. That this is an exploded theory, however, the critics do not contend. Mr. Frederic Harrison thinks' that Heroes is "apt to seem obvious, conntt, the emphatic » Studies in Early Victorinn Literature, 54 f. Lond., 1895. INTRODUCTION Ixzix assertion of a truism, that no one disputes." He further asserts that "nearly all the judgments" Carlyle passes in this book " are not only sound, but now almost universally accepted." To call Heroes an introduction to the study of history would be an injustice. The name suggests the dry, cautious handbooks of the specialists, intended for the use of stu- dents; but an introduction to the study of history it is none the less. It is meant for all classes whose reading extends beyond the newspaper and the novel. For all but the severe student its value must long be undiminished. Errors it contains of the lesser kind in matters of fact ; but they spring from haste and over-familiarity with the subject, never from ignorance or shallow study. Carlyle never takes your breath away, as Emerson does when he makes Chaucer borrow from Caxton.' The results in I/erocs were gathered slowly through long years of study; and the student brought to his work the patience of the scholar and the strange endowment we call genius. Even Mr. Traill, the least enthusiastic of recent editors, confesses that there are » fine and striking things " in Heroel a statement which is quite safe. Among the purple passages must be reckoned the sketch of Arabia and the Arabs, the portraits of Dante and I.uther, the paragraphs containing tlie essence of the Koran, the CommeJia, and the Thrhredci, the story of Francesca da Rimini, the defence of Luther,' bf^Mnning, " I, for one, pardon," the defence of Knox, begin- niiif,', " It seems to me hard measure," the praise of the new power of literature, the view of Shakspere's kingship over the Anglian world, the perorations on Mahomet and ( roinwell, and almost the whole account of Burns. To ' •Hut Chaucer is a great borrower. Chaucer, it seems, drew con- tinual,)' through Lydgat- and Caxton, from (Juido di Colonna." K^pre- "■"I"', e Men, ShaksfvareA, y>,G. I..,n(l.. 1X76. Nil f> n ' 3 I ■ ■■ V IXXX LECTURES ON HEROES appreciate the power and freshness of such a book, we must put ourselves in the place of Carlyle's audience and his first readers. To them every one of Carlyle's heroes was pre- sented in a new and startling light. There was, first, the outstanding feat of completely reversing the general esti- mate of Mahomet and Cromwell. The consecrated verdict of centuries was shown to be utterly false ; and the tide of public opinion was turned back and set flowing in thie con- trary direction to that which it had followed so long. Only a Hercules could perform two such labors. In his essay on Burns, in 1828, he had really set the outside world right about Scotland's darling poet, and here he follows up his work by giving the essay in brief. Both he and Macaulay wrote articles on Croker's Boswell, and, without question, Carlyle's treatment of the great doctor and his biographer is the wiser and kindlier of the two. In Heroes he repeats himself with marked effect. The world has gone with Carlyle, not with Macaulay. At this time Knox was un- known or misunderstood ; Carlyle gives him at least his due. In 1840 neither the glory of Norse literature nor the power of Dante was rightly valued ; but Carlyle is their first great interpreter. To have done these separate feats would have made the fortune of half a dozen books of half a dozen authors ; Carlyle combines them all within the covers of one small duodecimo. Nor does the book lack the good word of specialists. Vigfusson notes with warm approval Carlyle's insight in reading aright the tale of Olaf's meeting with Thor, whereas the pedants had been content to point out that the incident was spurious. Again, Sycd Ameer AH • ranks Carlyle with Sedillot, CKlsner, Deutsch. and Bartht'lemy St. Hilaire, as those to whom the world owes right ideas regarding Islam. 1 See A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachiti^s of Mohammed, V, viii. Lond., 1873. /ArTA'ODCrcr/ON Ixxxi as Perhaps the twentieth century may rem.mW r-.,...i. o„, the m.m.tahle portn^r^aint^r' pf Ju^^.e. E^i^^T^^n pra.sed h.s " portrait-eating. portrait-painting eyes," and his power .r this art is beyond d.spute. When he sets himself to work dehberately. as in the full-length portraits, body, soul, and sp.nt, of Wordsworth or Southey, in the Iir„:oLnJ, the result ,s hardly more admirable than when he dashes off h.s careless sketches in a familiar letter, as when he limns to the hfe D.ckens and Lord and Lady Holland in a pa<.e " He .s a master of the adjective and can render a face figure, and character in half a line." Who can forget the refractory juryman, "a thick-sot, flat-headed w>(."-who ;'erected himself in his chair," and owned "a head all cheeks jaw, and no brow ; of shape somewhat like a great ball of putty dropped f^om a height"? /ferocs may be regarded as a portrait gallery ; but the sitters were not merely^^men • they were also great movements of the race. The roll of names is long and august; Odin, or better still, in Car- lyle s own phrase, the type-Norseman, and one aspect of pr.mmve religion, for fear played as great a part as won- der m the makmg of it ; Mahomet and the rise of Islam • )ante "the voice of ten silent centuries," and mediaeval Catholicism ; the Reformation, with Luther and Knox as >ts priests and Cromwell as its soldier ; Johnson and Burns as representing the new literature of power, which is doing he work of church, and university, and parliament; and ».nally the trench Revolution, with Rousseau for its evan- gelist and Napoleon for its champion. To go to Heroes .lu'.?e can'dn"""^ "'"" \ ''"'" ^'' ^'"g-Phi-. F do not think ZnrT\ T '"'"^ ^" occaslo„al addition to the fine gallerv of , ^. ; - -'^ee C. /../.. I, ,89. '•Ro.eL /''' '^^'^'"'"'"'''^-^ oi Hallam, a„U. xviii, foot; and Rogers (an elegant, politely malignant old lady) " CI L II ^2.^ Ixxxii LECTURES ON HEROES 1 1 ii ! I i: W for minute, solid, moderate statements, as one would go to Gardiner or von Ranke, is a mistake ; but for suggestion, and stimulus to seek further into the spiritual history of the race, there is simply no one book like it. The whole theory of hero-worship may be thrown overboard without really injuring the book. Where else between two covers, within such narrow compass, can be found so many start- ing points for thought on the story of mankind? Repre- sentative Men is like it, and a book of value in its way, but plainly derived from Heroes. Rich as it is in thought, it does not kindle, it does not convince, notably in the case of Swedenborg. The tone is contemplative ; the writer does not seem to care whether you take his teach- ing or leave it. Heroes is charged with emotion which carries the reader along with it ; it has the accent of one who is in deadly earnest and believes every word he says. This, the first intention of Heroes, readers and critics have, with one consent, allowed to take second place ; and one and all pay its author the compliment of taking him not for a teacher of history but a teacher of righteousness. The question of some critics, " What are we to learn from all this ? " need not remain long unanswered. Much every way. There are three ways of regarding the book. It is a new interpretation of history, or a vantage ground for fresh points of view, or a new gospel of and for the individual. At lowest, the argument of Matthew .\rnold for Byron, that the mere spectacle of such splendid energy of heart and brain at work strengthens the beholder, applies more aptly to Carlyle. His view of history is distinctly religious ; to him history is an " inarticulate Bible " ; and it is natural and just to recognize in him the English moralist of the nine- teenth century, as in Addison the moralist of the eighteentli. The ethical appeal of Heroes is felt throughout ; but there is INTRODUCTION Izxziii surprisingly little of direct "exhortation to hero-worship" in it. The exhortation is unspoken, implicit. Some adverse opinions dematid attention a^ this j|flU}t. One of the latest appreciations of Carlyle is by Mr. Frederic Harrison.' uHe considers The French Rnolution to be his masterpiece and puts Heroes next, an opinion in which he probably stands alone. After commending Heroes for good work done, especially on its first appearance, he offers two objections. First, the "whole idea" of Heroes is "per- verted" because it finus room for no Catholic chief or priest. Mr. Harrison mentions Dante, but seems to forget that he is, in the world of literature, the grand spokesman of the Old Faith, and that to appreciate him aright is to appreciate aright the religion for which he stands. Our critic forgets also that when Heroes appeared the Oxford Movement and the "no Popery" cry were engaging the mind of England. Carlyle goes out of his way to speak of tiiese in his lecture on the great schismatic, Luther, and he certainly does Catholicism justice. Every reference to it is marked by moderation. This is an imperfect world ; and when an Ultramontane or a Comtist, for that matter, esti- ni.ites Puritanism as fairly, it will be time to quarrel with Carlyle, the born Presbyterian, for his " unjust hatred of the Catholic religion." In the next place, Mr. Harrison rebukes Carlyle for 'incoherence" in calli ng Burns "the most gifted Rrif ioh $oul " of the eJP^htppnth rpnf.ry , ^r^^ says fiij -f hpr » Perhaps the whole cycle of Sartorian extravaganza contains no say- ing so futile as the complaint that the British nation in the great war with France entrusted their destinies to a phan- tasmic Pitt, instead of to ' the thunder-god, Robert Burns.' " It IS well in some cases to verify your references. Carlyle belongs to a nation noted for its caution. The statement 1 Studies in Early Victorian Literature, 53-58. Lond., 1895. •M ,'J i Ixxxiv LECTURES ON HEROES 11' 1: In ii. 11 li of Burns's natural endowment he offers tentatively; and the second he did not make at all, A reference to the lecture will show that what Carlyle did say was that he could not rejoice at the spectacle of a Europe on the verge of a P'rench Revolution, and finding no use for a Robert Burns except in gauging beer. The " incoherence " is not Carlyle's. Indeed, "incoherence" is hardly the term for such an error ; but it is thus that criticism is written.* Matthew Arnold " never much liked Carlyle." " He seemed to me to be carrying coals to Newcastle, as our proverb says; preaching earnestness to a nation which had plenty of it by nature." ^ In the lecture on Emerson, he disposes of Carlyle in the high Arnoldian fashion we know so well. There he defines the articles of the true Carlylean faith as four, — the dignity of labor, the necessity of right- eousness, the love of veracity, the hatred of shams, — and uses them to upset Carlyle's thesis that happiness is not the main thini;.' Against his first statement it is sufficient to set the opinion of Harriet Martineau, who certainly knew her world. " He has . . . infused into the mind of the English nation a sincerity, earnestness, herlthfuhiess, and courage which can be appreciated only by those who art- old enough to tell what was our morbid state when Byron was the representative of our temper, the Clapham Church of our religion, and the rotten-borough system of our politi- cal morality." * Compared with the second statement, Mr. Leslie Stephen's view is much more satisfactory. In his ' A similar error which tends to throw doubt on all that is good in the book is the egregious statement "that no one of Shakspere's play- was published with his name in his lifetime." Choice of Hooks, 6( Lend., 1 886. '^ Letters of Matthew Arnolii, II, 191. ^ Discourses in America, 199. l.ond., lSg6. * Autobiography, I, 292. Boston, 1 878. \ INTRODUCTION Uucxv opinion, Carlyle's essential teaching is, first, that morality or justice is the one indispensable thing; justice means the law of God ; the sole test of any human law is con- formity to the divine law; and, last, "all history is an inarticulate Bible, and in a dim, intricate way reveals the divine appearances in this lower world." > In other words, Carlyle discerns as ultimate truth a moral order in the universe ; and nowhere does he preach this doctrine more directly and emphatically than in Heroes. It is this, rather than "exhortation to hero-worship," which explains the ethical appeal of the book. The parents of Carlyle chose wisely in bringing him up for the ministry. Though he never wagged his paw in an orthodox pulpit, he was a preacher of righteousness all his days ; and he succeeded better than most in the matter of practice. The very " repetition " Traill objects to is part of the preacher's art ; Landor's heroine beat her words in upon her nurse's knee; and Arnold himself favors an itera- tion that sometimes deserves the epithet Falstaff fitted to Prince Hal's. Years before his power was generally recog- nizfd, Goethe saw this preaching gift in his obscure Scottish translator and correspondent, and spoke a prophecy or ere he went. "Carlyle is a moral force of great si-.nficance. He has a great future before him, and indeed one can see no end to all that he will do and effect by his influence.'" (Joethe died without seeing more than the dawn of that mrtu.;nce ; but now, across the gap of seventy years, we can see how true a word that was. To estimate rightly Carlyle's influence, it is necessary to revert once more to his first audience and the ideas of 1840. The England of that day had Just passed through the blood- less revolution of the Reform I5ill, which shifted the power 1 llmirs in ii Lihrary, Carlyle's Kt/n,s, IH, 285. Lond., 1892. - Lch.niiiinii and O'. Coir. (July -3, iS::;), 5^. i. r Iw 1 \\ i:. l» Ixxxvi LECTURES ON HEROES once for all from the aristocracy to the middle class. There was further revolution brewing in the spread of Chartism. Undue value was set on the new machinery of government by ballot-box ; and undue importance was attached to the action of the masses. The prevailing social ideals were not earnest, Matthew Arnold notwithstanding. They were limited and conventional. It was the era of the dilettante and the dandy. The Book of Snobs was unwritten ; but the snobs were all ready to be caught and caged and exhibited in the famous stiii'Num gatherum. The prevailing tone of English society as given by Jane Austen is tiie same as in The New- comes and yanity Fair. Harriet Martineau indicts in plain terms the London she knew, literary London, for flattery, flirtation, insincerity, selfishness, and supports each count with very strong evidence. Tennyson, who had not yet come to his own, was finding reasons for cursing " the social wants that .sin against the strength of youth," as well as "the social lies." Dickens and Kingsley were gathering knowl- edge and experience to be used in their crusades. Tlit London of the Fraserians, of D'Orsay and the Countess of Blessington, of Bulwer, of "Black Bottle" Cardigan, of Theodore Hook, of the various " Circumlocution Offices," the drinking, duelling, practical-joking London of the day, for which the aristocracy set the tone, was not unduly earnest. London society was then small ; at a much later period, L.idy Palmerston was able to write the invitations for h r p srtics with her own hand. It was from this small upper class th;U Carlyle's audiences were drawn ; and it is his triumph that with everything against him, nationality, accent, manner, and, most of all, his message, which ran directly counter to the tend- encies of the time, he not only secured a hearing but engaged a host of enthusiastic followers. The two great voices of the time were Newman and Carlyle ; the one insisting on the value of the oldest clothes, and the other, on getting rid of M iNTRODUCTIOff Ixxxvii them. Now Newman appeals chiefly to a church, to a literary remnant ; but Carlyle still speaks to the mass of men. Herm made itself felt as an influence at once. Maurice's complaint shows how soon the leaven began to work. Nine years later an acute foreign observer notes how far it had spread through the whole lump. "This rehabilitation of the hero is to-day of all Carlyle's ideas the most widely spread, and the one which has made head most rapidly. At the present time it is to be met everywhere in England. You cannot open a book dealing with philosophy, or read an ordinary review article, without encountering it,' at one time combated, at another celebrated with enthusi- asm. This idea is the basis of Emerson's philosophy, and has inspired all his essays on confidence in oneself, and the power of the individual. " > The last part of this assertion is, perhaps, too strong, but the idea of Heroes influenced Emerson without doubt. One biographer of Ruskin is inclined to set down his early resolution to do something, and to be something, to having read Heroes^ Professor Allen traces a similar influence in the case of Phillips Brooks. If Carlyle through Hero,s had done no more than teach these three teachers of men and to touch through them the thousands who have felt the power of their written or spoken words, his service to the race would be quite intalculable. Hut these are not the only three mighty men ; and the book still sells by thousands of copies every year! In spite of critics' sneers or faint praise, in spite of the anxious followers of literary fashions, the book still lives and works Publishers do not distribute their wares out of pure love of humanity, nor do the thousands of annual pur- chasers put their copies of Heroes away unread. ' Emik Montegut, Revue des Deux MonJes, Tom. ii, p. 314, 1849. -W. G. follingwood, The Life and Work 0/ John Ruskin, I, 94 Ix)nd., 1893. 1 1 ' vWi f: 1 * ■i * , -ft :i V' i vl "! fcr'i ; LiM ^R l*K< buuviii LECTURES ox HEROES "The field is the world." Hume cast a chance word carelessly into the great seed-field. \\\ the fullness of timr it found lodgment in the brain of a hiolher Scot, and bore fruit in a new thought about history, a new impulse to earnest life. The new thought was given by word of mouth to a ha.iuful if people iii .. Luiuion room. It was "^pre m1 abroad the next year and the next in the form ot ;i printed book. From Engl.md it crossed the sea to New Kngland. It helped to shape tho lives (i ai least three great men who had power to teach their U Hows. And year by year, the re.iders spread abroad in evei cxpandmg circles, Sucii is the history of Heroes. " It is a goustrous determined speaking out of the truth about ;^' veral things," was the final judgment of ( arlyle on the work of his hand. True wc rds spoken with determination do not lose themselves in the air. Carlyle appeals to the young and to the young in iieart. His trumpet call is whai the unspoiled nature eagerly responds to ; for whoever else bids crouch, he bids aspire. ON HHROHS. HERO-WORSHIP. ANO THE HEROIC IN HISTORY LECTURE I niK HKR«> AS UIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY [Tuesday, 5th May 1840.] » VVk have undertaken to discourse here for a little on (Jrcat Men, their manner of appearance in our world's busi- ness, how they have shaped themselves in the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, what work they (lid ; — on Heroes, namely, and on their reception and performance ; what I call Hero-worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evidently this is a large topic ; deserv- ng quite other treatment than we can expect to give it at present. A large topic; indeed, an illimitable one; wide IS Universal History itself. For, as I take it. Universal 10 History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these fjreat ones ; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived ' W »' }{> Date set abme title. MICROCOfY RESOIUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) I.I 1 4.5 150 2.8 2.5 2.2 2.0 1^ ^ APPLIED IM^GE Ir 1653 East Main Street Rochester. New fork 14609 USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288 - 5989 - Fax I Z LECTURES OAT HEROES to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accom. /-^hshed in the world are properly the outer material result f the practical realisation and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were Jhe history of these. Too clearly it is a topic we shall do no justice to in this place ! One comfort is, that Great Men, taken up in any way, are profitable company. We cannot look, however imperfectly 10 upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He IS the living liglU-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlight- ened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven ; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native ongmal insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness •- in -whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them' On any terms whatsoever, you will - .t grudge to wander in such neighbourhood for a while. T .ese Six classes of Heroes 20 chosen out of widely-distant' countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we 00k faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us Could we see then well, we should get some glimpses into he 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 I 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 30 I must make the attempt. ' It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religi. s the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a natic f men's. By religion I do not mean here the church-creed Ul'tPIP widely distant THE riERO AS /Ur/X/TV which he professes, the articles of faith whicli 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 each or any of them. This is not what I call religion, this profession and assertion ; which is often only a profes- sion 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 without asserting it even to himself, much less ic 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 tiiere, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his /v7/i,w//,- or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-irligioii : 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 20. inquire, therefore, first of all. What religion they had? Was it Heath'jnism, — plurality of gods, mere sensuous rep- resentation 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, resting on Eternity ; Pagan empire of Force displaced by a nobler supremacy, that of Holiness ? Was it Scepticism, uncer- tainty and inquiry whether there was an I'nseen World, any Mystery of Life except a mad one ; - doubt as to all 3c this, or perhaps unbelief and flat denia'I ? Answering of this question is giving us the soul of the history of the man or nation. The thoughts they had were tht' parents of the actions they did ; their feelings were parents of their 'f'M rr LECTURES OA' HEROES thoughts: it was the unseen and 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, 10 the oldest primary form of Heroism. Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this Pagan- ism ; almost inconceivable to us in these days. A bewilder- ing, inextricable jungle of delusions, confusion, falsehoods and absurdities, covering the whole field of Life^*! A thing that fills us with astonishment, almost, if it were possible, with incredulity, — 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 pr .ellow-man 20 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 inextricable 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 30 attained to. Such things were and are in man ; in all men ; in us too. Some speculators have a short way of accounting for the Pagan religion: mere quackery, priestcraft, and dupery, ^ H' H' unseen spiritual 2 H' IP life there. THE HERO AS DIVINITY S say they; no sane man ever did believe it— merely con- trived 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 hypothesis about men's doings and his- tory ; and I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Pay-nism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time 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 la 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 thin-s, 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 birih to nothing ; gives death to all things.^ We shall not see into the true heart of anything, if we look merely at the quackeries of it ; if we do not reject the quackeries altogether ; a- mere dis- 20 eases, 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 everywhere is the born enemy of lies. I find ('.rand Lamaism itself to have a kind of truth in it. Read the candid, clear-sighted, rather sceptical Mr. Turner's - Account of his Embassy to * that country, and see. They have their belief, these poor Thibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom jme belief in a kind of Pope! At bottom still better, 30 belief that there is a Greatest Man; that //r is discoverable ; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedi- ence which knows no bounds ! This is the truth of Grand » H' H» all. II' Hamilton's Travels into O LRCTURES OX IIKNOF.S I-amaisin ; the 'discoverability ' is the only error here. The Thibet priests have methods .A their own of discovering what Man is (ircatest, fit to be supreme ever them. Bad methods : but are they so much worse than our methods , of understandin and facts ! It ,s no longer a reality, yet it was one. We ou-ht to understand that this seeming cloudrteld 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 instmct for detecting quacks, for detesting quacks Let us try If, leaving out both the quack theory^ and the .o allegory one. and listening with affectionate attention to that far-off confused rumour of the Pagan ages, we cannot ascertain so much as this at least. That there was a kind of fact at the heart of them ; that they too were not men- dacious and distracted, but in their own poor way true and sane I i-iS You remember that fancy of Plato'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 wov d his wonder be,^ his rapt astonishment at the si-ht we ^o daily witness with indifference ! With the free open sense of '-^ 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 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 this" child-man of Plato's/ 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 » H' W firm-land « H' II' quack-theory • H« H» H3 Aristotle's n \v IP IP the ' H« H» H' Aristotle. *H' IP IP were •' IP IP IP says the Philosopher, Tl/F. HERO AS DlllX/jy infinite variety of si-lits, sounds, .■,!iapes and motions, which we now collectively name Tniverse, Nature, or the like, — and so with a name dismiss it from us. To the wild deep- hearted man all was yet new, not veiled ' under names or formulas; it stood naked, (lashinj;.in - on him there, beauti- ful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the rhinker and Prophet it forever is, /yvA/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 lo 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 jkhviI of insight. It is by not thinking that we cease to wonder at it. Hardened roui.d us, encasing wholly every notion we form, is a wrap-, page of traditions, hearsays, mere 7oords. We call that tire of ' the black thunder-cloud 'electricity,' and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk : but 20 ■u>:.at is it ? What made it ? Whence comes it ? Whither goes it ? Science has done much for us ; but it is a poor that would hide from us the great deep sacred -ue of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, .1 all science swims as a mere superricial film. This ..^.iJ, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. That great mystery of TrMK, were there no other; the illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, rolling, 3c rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim like exhalations,' like apparitions which arc, and then are not: this is forever 1 II" Ii» unveiled -^ H' H» H^ flasliing in ►I/'-'! 10 lAC'/'fA/uS- i>X /MA'OA.V 'I very literally a miracle ; a thing to strike us dumb, — for we have no word to speak about it. I'his I'niverse, ah me ' — what could the wild man know of it ; what can we yet know ? That it is a lorce, and thousandfold Complexity of Forces ; a Force which is w/ 74V. That is all ; it .< not we, it is altogether dilferent from us. Force, Force, every- where Force ; we ourselves a mysterious Force in the centre of that. 'There is not a leaf rotting on the highway but has Force in it : how else could it rot .> ' Nay surely, to :o the Atheistic I'hinker, if such a one were possible, it must be a miracle too, this huge illimitable \'liirlwind 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 I Atheistic scieiue babbles poorly of it, with scientific no- menclatures, 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 2o thing, —ah, an unspeakable, godlike thing; towards which the best attitude for us, after never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and humility of soul ; worship if not in words, then in silence. But now I remark farther : Wh.at in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-otT* of those poor undevout wrappages, nomen- clatures and scientific hearsays, -this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itselt. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was 30 then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it face to face. 'All was (iodlike or 1 II' II'H^me!- 3 111 H»H3 what not 2 IV U- If envelopes -t II' IP H' l„,tileil up s 11 « IP II' stripping off HIE III. NO AS v/r/x/ry 11 God:' —Jean Paul ssill finds it so; the jjiant Jean Paul, who has power to escape out of hearsays : but there then * were no hearsays, • anopus shininjj-dosvn -' over the desert, with its blue diamond brij^htness (that wild blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever witness here), would pierce into the hear o* the wild Fshmaelitish mai», whom it was guiding through the solitary waste there. To his wild heart, with all feelings in it, with no s/'cirh for any feeling, it might seem a little eye, that (anopus, glancing-out" on him from the great deep I'-tcrnity; revealing the inner Splendour lo to him. Cannot we understand how these men UMrshippnl Canopus ; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars ? Such is to me the secret of all forms of I'aganism. Worship is transcendent wonder ; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure ; that is worship. To these primeval men, all things and everything they saw exist beside them were an emblem of the (Jodlike, of some (iod. And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. To us also, through every star, through every blade of gra.ss, is not a (rod made visible, if we will open our minds and ao eyes ? We do not worship in that way now : but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we call a 'poetic nature,' th we recognise how every object has a divine beauty iu .; how every object still verily is *a window through which we may look into Infmitude Mtself ' ? He that can discern the loveliness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of (Jenius, gifted, lovable."' These poor Sabeans did even what he does, — in their own 'ashion. That they did it, in what fashion soever, was a merit ; bet- ter than what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse 30 and camel did, - namely, nothing! 'S ' If IP III ihen there * II' IP W glancinsr down MI' iP IP shining d .vn ^ IPintinitude * h' IP lPh)vcal>le. 12 Lf-U'TCh'J'lS OX f/KfiOhS Hut now if all things whatsoever th.it we look upon arc emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that inoreso than •ny of them is man such an emblem. Vou have heard o' St. Chrysostom's celebrated sayinj; in reference to the She- kinah, or .\rk of festimony, 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 itiielf " I," — ah, what words have we for such things ? - is a breath lo of Heaven; the Highest Ik-ing rc/eals himself in man. This body, these faculties this life of ours, is it not all as a vesture for that Unnamed } •Ihere 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. Itending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven when we hay our hand on a human body!' This sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric ; but it is not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be a scientific fact ; the expression, in such words 20 as can be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the miracle of miracles, —the great inscrutable mystery of Clod. 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 h.ad 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 nnd Karth by merely giving them scien- 30 tific names, but ha. 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 rvors/iip Nature, and man more than anything else in Nature. Wor- 1 M' W H» finished off /•///•; iihKo IS oniMiY 13 10 ship, that is, .is F said jibove, admire witluiiit limit : liiis, itj tlie full use «>f their f.iciiltics, \vi' i .ill sincerity of heart, they could do. I consider Jlcro-worship to be the yrand modifying element in that ancient system of thoujrht. What I called the |)erplexed jungle of I'.ayanism spranj;, we may say, out of niany roots: every admiration, adoration of a star or nitural object, w.is a root or fibre of a root ; l)ut Hero-worship is the deepest root of all ; the tai>root, from which in a great dej;reo all the rest were nourished and grown. And now if worship even of a star had some meaning in it, how much more might that of a Hero ! Worship of a Hero is transcerd.. n 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 m the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying inHuence in man's life. Religion I find stand upon it; not Paganism only, but far higher and truer religions, — all religion hitherto known. Hero-worship, heartfelt prostrate 20 admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest godlike I'orm of Alan, - is not thai the germ o^ instianity itself .' The greatest of all Heroes is ( >ne — om we do not name here! Let sacred silence meditite that sacred matter; you will find it the ultimate p«Mif«ction of a princi- ple extant throughout man's -vi.ole histc i v on earth. Or coming into lower, less /«//:^;peakab'c provinces, is not all Loyalty akin to religious l-aith also? Kaith is loyalty to some inspired ("eacher, some spiritual Hero. .And what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of all society, but x\\ efiluence of Hero-worship, submissive admiration for the truly great ? .Society is founded on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, ou which luuu.in association rests, are what we may call a //<7-<;archy ((Government of Hero*s), — ^o r f If- f jiii I* 14 LECTURES OAT HEROES or a Hierarchy, for it is « sacred ' enough withal ! The Duke means Dux, Leader ; King is Kon-nins;, A'an-ning, Man that A-noivs or cans. Society everywhere is some represen- tation, not ///supportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship of Heroes ; — reverence and obedience done to men really great and wise. Not ///supportably inaccurate, I say! They are all as bank-notes, these social dignitaries, all representing gold; — and several of them, alas, always are /or^e(/ notes. We can do with some forged false notes; 10 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 everywhere, and cannot cease till man himself ceases. I am well aware that in these days Hero-worship, the thing I call Hero-worship, professes to have gone out, and 20 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 take the dimensions of him, —and bring him out to be a little kind of man! He was the 'creature of the Time,' they say; the Time called him forth, the Time did everything, he nothing — but what we the little critic could have done too ! This seems to me 30 but melancholy work. The Time call forth ? Alas, we have known Times ca// loudly enough for their great man ; but not find him when they called ! He was not there \ Providence had not sent him ; the Time, m/////^r jts loudest,' ^\V\V\V Shew THE HEKO AS Dili MTV 15 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 foiiiiJ a man great enough, a man wise and good enough : wisdom to discern truly what the Time wanted, valour to lead it on the right road thither ; these are the salvation of any Time. But I liken common languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their lan- guid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling-down- into ever worse distress towards ic 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 (Jod's own hand, is the lightning. His word is the wise healing word which all can believe in. All blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into tire like his own. The dry mould- ering 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 (ire ? " No sadder proof 20 can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. There is no sadder symptom of a genera- tion 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 (Ireat Man to have been the indis- pensable 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 happily they cannot always completely succeed. In all times it is possible for ' 11' IP IP uo pantpaph. - II' 11^ IP crumbling down 4 3^-' 16 LECTU:;ES ok l/RRORS a man to arise great enough to feel that they and their doctrines are ciiimeras and cohwelxs. And what is notable, in no time whatever can they entirely eradicate out of liv- ing 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 forever while man endures. IJoswell venerates his Johnson, right truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbeliev- ing French believe in their Voltaire ; and burst-out ' round 'o him into very curious Hero-worship, in that last act of his life when they 'stifle him under roses.' It has always seemed to me extremely curious this of Voltaire. Truly, if Christianity be the highest instance of Hero-worship' then we may find here in Voltaireism - one of the lowest ! 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 character of th.ir whole mind ; adoration had nowhere a place in it. Yet see ! The old 20 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 injustice, delivering Calases, unmasking hypocrites in high places ; — in short that he too, though in a strange wa^y, has fought like a valiant man. They feel withal that, 'if persiflage be the great thing, there never was such a persi- fletir. He is the realised '• 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 30 they are fit for. Accordingly all persons, from the (^ueen Antoinette to the Douanier at the Porte St. Denis, do'^they not worship him ? People of quality disguise themselves as 1 II' IP IP hurst out ■^- II' 11^- Hi Voltairism 8 H' IP IP realized THE HERO AS DIVIXITY 17 tavern-waiters. The Maitre do I'oste, 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, beautifulest,* noblest in all France, that did not feel this man to be higher, beauti- fuler,' nobler. Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, from the divine Founder of Christianity to the withered I'ontiff ic of Kncyclopedism, 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 submissive before great men: nay can we honestly bow down to anything else? Ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing 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 sceptical logic, or general triviality, insincerity and aridity of any Time and its influences can destroy this noble inborn loy- 20 alty and worship that is 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 t lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. The confused wreck of things crumbling and even crasning and tumbling all round us in thes^ revolu- . tionary ages, will get down so far; no farther. It is an! eternal corner-stone, from which they can begin to build jc themselves up again. That man, in some sense or other, ' worships Heroes ; that we all of us reverence and must ever 1 H« H* H' Postilion : " H" IP IP beautifullest a 11' H= IP beautifulier L. 18 I.ECTUKI'IS ON HEROES reverence fireat 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 I 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 lo have struggled, as they could, to set forth. I think Scandi- navian Paganism, to us here, is more interesting than any other. 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 worshippers 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 tolerable 20 means to do it ; for there is another point of interest in these Scandinavian mythologies : that they have been pre- served so well. In that strange island Iceland, — burst-up,^ the geologists say, by fire from the bottom of the sea; a wild land of bar- renness and lava ; swallowed many months of every year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming 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 30 battle-field of Frost and Fire;— where of all places we » H' 11= IP rushings down a H' H* W burst up ^ II' IP \V eight hundred « H' H» IP snow-jokuls 6 H' IP W sulphur pools THE IfERO AS n/rfX/TV 19 10 least looked for Literature or written memorials, the record of these things was written down. 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 uttered musically their thoughts. Much would be lost, had Iceland not been burst-up ' from the sea, not been discovered by the North- men ! The old Norse Poets were many of them natives of Iceland. Sa;mund, one of the early Christian Priests there, who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Paganism, collected certain of their old Pagan songs, just about becoming obso- lete then, — Poems or Chants- of a mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character: that is what Norse critics call the FJ — Frost the old Norse Seer discerns to be a monstrous hoary" Jotun, the Giant T/irym, Hrym ; or Rimr, the old word now 30 nearly obsolete here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. Ritne was not then as now a dead chemical thing, but a living Jotun or Devil ; the monstrous Jotun Rime drove home his Horses at night, sat • combing their » H' H» H* Home ^ H' li* W too, » H' H« H^ Hoaiy i THE HERO AS DIVINITY 21 manes,' — which Horses were Hail-Clouds, or fleet Frost- Winds. His Cows — No, not his, but a Itinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are Icchei};s: this Hymir 'looks at the rocks' with his devil-eye, and they ^Mit 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 clouds is the drawing- down ' of Thor's angry brows ; the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rending Hammer flung from the hand of lo 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 stormblast before the thunder begin. Balder again, the White God, the beautiful, the just and benignant (whom the early Christian Missionaries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun, — beautifulest " of visible things ; wondrous too, and divine still, after all our Astron- omies and Almanacs ! But perhaps the notablest god we hear tell-of ' is one of whom Grimm the German Etymolo- gist finds trace: the God IViiiisc/i, or Wish. The God 20 IVish ; 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 (Jod Wish is not the true God. Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only for ety- mology'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 bargemen, when the 3c River is in a certain flooded state (a kind of backwater, or eddying swirl it has, very dangerous to them), call it Eager; 1 H' IV IP drawing down 2 H« H» H* beautifuUest s H' H» IP tell of * W W H^ shews 1 p. \- ♦ ' W'- f -i m\ 22 /./a/rA-As ox ///■:a'o/-:s they cry out, ♦' Have a c.irc, there is the A>^v/- coming ! " Curious ; that word survivinj,', like the peak of a submerged world ! The ,>A/,s/ Nottingham bargemen had believed in the God Ae<'ir. Indeed our Knglish blood too in good part is Dani , Norse; or rather, at bottom, Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, except a superficial one, — as of Heathen and Christian, or the like. But all over our Island we are mingled largely with Danes proper, — from the incessant invasions there were : and this, of course, 'o jn a greater proportion 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 commo : peo- ple is still in a singular degree Icelandic; its Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too are ' Normans,' Northmen, - if that be any great beauty ! Of the chief god, ( )din, we shall speak by and by. Mark at present so much ; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is : a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies, — as 20 (Jods and Demons. x\ot inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and won- der, on this ever-stupendous L'niverse. To me there is in the Norse System something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old (Ireek Paganism, dis- tinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought ; the genuine Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them ; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things, —the first characteristic of all 30 good Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half- sport, as in the Greek Paganism ; a certain homely truth- fulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our beautiful Apollo statues and clear smiling mythuses, to come down upon the Norse THK ///hO AS nil- IS' I TV 23 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 the Pot on his head, like a huge hat, and walking off with it, — quite lost in it, the ears of the Pot reaching down to his heels I A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward giant- hood, characterises that Norse System ; enormous force, as yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large uncer- tain strides. Consider only their primary mythus of the Creation. The Gods, having got the Giant Ymer slain, a lo (iiant made by 'warm wind,' -'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 riesh was the Land, the Rocks his bones ; of his eye- brows they formed Asgard their Gods'-Dwelling ; his skull* was the great blue vault of Immensity, and the brains of it became the Clouds. What a Hyper-Urobdignagian business ! Untamed Thought, great, giantlike, enormous ; ~ to be tamed in due time into the compact greatness, not giant- like, but godlike and stronger than gianthood, of the 20 Shakspeares, the Goethes ! — Spiritually as well as bodily these men are our progenitors. 1 like, too, that representation they have of the Tree Igdrasil. All Life is figured by them as a Tree. Igdrasil, the Ash-tree of Fxistence, has its roots deep-down* in the kingdoms of Hela or Death ; its trunk reaches up heaven- liigh, spreads its boughs over the whole I'niverse: it is the Tree of Existence. At the foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit Three Nonuxs, Fates, — the Past, Present, Future ; water- ing its roots from the Sacred Well. Its ' boughs,' with their 30 buddings and disleatings, — events, things suffered, things 1 IP H* H^ cauldron •> II' IP .nrk out « H' W winds IP wind * IP IP .^cull IP skull 5 H' H» H' deep down I -Ml fg-J:. 24 LECTURES OX HEROES 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 of Nations. The rustle of it is the noise of Human Kxistence, onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of Human Passion rustling through it ; — or stormtost, the stormwind howling through it like the voice of all the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Flxistence. It is the past, the present, and the future; what was done, what is doing, what will be done; 'the 10 infinite conjugation of the verb To ito.' Considering how human things circulate, each inextricably in communion with all, — how the word I speak to you today is borrowed, not from Ulfila the Mitsogoth 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 *^ Machine of the l^niverse,' — 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 ao i. 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 \\vi thought, above all, of theyfrj/ Norse man who had an original power of think- ing. 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 ani aals may feel ; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel ; — till the gre.t Thinker came, the original man, the Seer ; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the 30 slumbering 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 say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted THE I/EA''^ .IS DIVIXITY 2S sleep, round his Thought; answering? to it, N'es, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;— /> 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, (lenius, and so forth : but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them ; a Prophet, .i Ood ! — Thought once awn^; ened does not again slumber ; unfolds itself into a System of Thought ; grows, in man after man, generation after genera- tion, — till its full stature is reached, and such System of la Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another. For the N'orse people, the man now named Ddin, and Chief Norse (lod, we fancy, was such a man. A Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body ; a Hero, of worth /wmeas- urable ; admiration for whom, transcending the known bounds, became adoration. Hns he not the power of articulate Thinking ; and many other powers, as yet mirac- ulous ? So, with boundless gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he not solved for them the sphinx- tnigma ' of this Universe ; given assurance to them of their 20 own destiny there ? Hy him they know now what they have to do here, what to look for hereafter. Kxistence has become articulate, melodious by him ; ho 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 ITniverse once promulgated, a like view starts into being in all minds; grows, keeps ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic ink ; at his word it starts into 30 visibility in all. Nay, in every epoch of the world, the j^reat event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world ! — * H' Sphinx-enigma 26 /.HCri'K/iS OX //AA'OAS •5 One other thing we must not forget; it will explain, a little, the confusion of these Norse Kddas. They are not one coherent System of Thought ; but properly the summa- tion of several successive systems. All this of the old Norse Ikjiief which is Hungout ' for us, in one level of distance in the Kdda, like a picture painted on the same canvas,'' does not at all st.;nd so in the reality. It stands rather at all manner of distances and depths, of successive 'generations since the Belief first began. All Scandinavian 10 thinkers, 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 Juiiia, 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 en all know. Wheresoever a thinker appeared, there in the thin^' 2o 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, i:: ..v>i this too sunk for us like the rest ! i)f Odin what history ? Strange rather to reflect that he /i,i,/ 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 such a work ! But the work, much of it, has perished ; the worker, all to the name. " Wednes- 30 day, * mtn will say tomorrow ; Odin's day ! Of Odin there exists no history , no document of it ; no guess about it worth repeating. MI' HMI^ flung out - II" IP FI' canvass MI' H» IP ever new * H' Ii= II' thought of 4 H' H- IP Wednesday T'fF iiKKo AS n/i'/x/ry a Snorro indeed, in the quietest .nanner, almost in .1 brief businesH style, writes down, in his //,/«/./•////<,'/(/, how ( )din was a heroic Prince, in the iJlack-Sea rejjion, with Iwelve Peers, and a great people straitened for room. How he led these Asm (Asiatics) of his out of Asiii ; settled them in the North parts of Kurope, by warlike conquest ; invented Letters, Poetry and so forth, — and came by and by to be worshipped as ' hief (Jod by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made into Iwelve Sons of his own, (iods like himself: Snorro has no doubt of this. Saxo (Irammaticus. ir a very curious Northman of that same century, is still more unhesitating; scruples not to find out a historical fact in every individual mythus, and writes ii down as a terrestrial event in Denmark or elsewhere. Torfaus, learned and cautious, some centuries later, assigns by calculation a i/aU for it : Odin, he says, came into Kurope about the Year 70 before Christ. ( )f all which, as grounded .n\ mere uncer- tainties, found to be untenable now, I need say nothing. Far, very far beyond the Year 70 ! Odm's date, adventures, whole terrestrial history, figure and environment are sunk 20 from us forever into unknown thousands of years. Nay Crimm, the (lerman Antiquary, goes so far as to deny that any man Odin ever existed. He pro s it by etymology. The word li'ui>/,ni, \\\\\c\\ 's the original form of Oiiiii, a word spread, as name of their chief Divinity, over :ill the Teutonic Nations everywhere; this word, which connects itself, according to Grimm, with the Latin rut/ere, with the English idhh' and suchlike,'- - means primarily Movement, Source of Movement, Power ; and is the fit name of the highest god, not of any man. The word signifies 3c Divinity, he says, among the old Saxon, German and all Teutonic Nations ; the adjectives formed from it all signify iiivine, supreme, or something pertaining to the chief god. 1 H' H» IV such like M 28 LEC TURKS ON HEROES Like enough ! We must bow to Grimm in matters ety- mological. Let us consider it fixed that Wiiotan means l/(i(/iii!^, force of Movement. And now still, what hinders it from being the name of a Heroic Man and Afovcr, as well as of a god ? As for the adjectives, and words formed from it, — did not the Spaniards in their universal admiration for Lope, get into the habit of saying 'a Lope flower,' 'a Lope t/ama,' if the flower or woman were of surpassing beauty ? Had this lasted, Lo/>i- would have grown, in Spain, f to be an adjective signifying godlike also. Indeed, Adam Smith, in his r'.ssay on lAinguagc, surmises that all adjectives whatsoever were formed precisely in that way: some very green thing, chiefly notable for its greenness, got the appel- lative name Green, and then the next thing remarkable for that quality, a tree for instance, was named the green tree, - - as we still say 'the steam coach,' 'four-horse coach,' or the like. All primary adjectives, according to Smith, were formed in this way ; were at first substantives and things. We cannot annihilate a man for etymologies like that ! 20 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, agrees with all that thought will teach one about it, to assure us of this. How the man Odin came to be considered a^W, the chief god? — that surely is a question which nobody would wish to dogmatise upon. I have said, his people knew no iimtts to their admiration of him ; they had as yet no scale to measure admiration by. Fancy your own generous heart's- 30 Ic .' of some greatest man expanding till it tramrended 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 whei._v., is ever an THE HEKO AS DIVIiVITY 29 enigma, a kind of terror and wonder to himself, — should have felt that perhaps he was divine ; that he was some effluence of the «\Vuotan,' ' Mo;cmciit,'' Supreme Power and Divinity, of whom to his rapt vision all Nature was the awful Flame-irnage; that some effluence of Wiiotan dwelt here in him ! He was not necessarily false ; he was but mistaken, speaking the truest he knew. A great soul, any sincere soul, knows not tvhat he is, — alternates between the highest height and the lowest deptii ; can, of all things, the least measure — Himself ! What others take him for, and lo 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 wild soul full of noble ardours and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness and glorious new light ; a divine Universe burst- ing all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what could he think himself to be .' " Wuotan ? " All men answered, " Wuotan ! " .\nd then consider what mere Time will do in such cases ; how if a man was great while living, he becomes tenfold 20 greater when dead. What an enormous canura-ohscura magnifier is Tradition ! How a thing grows in the human Memory, in the human Imagination, when love, worship and all 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 gre.it man would grow mythic, the contemporaries who had seen him, being once all dead. And in three-hundred ' years, and in three- jc Ihousand^years — ! — To attempt theorising oi\ such matters would profit little : they are matters which refuse to be theo- remedTm^ diagramed ; which Logic ought to know that she ' II' H' IP three hundred 2 jp H2 jp three thousand f«'t 30 LECTURES OiX HEROES \ s cannot speak of. Enough for us to discern, far in the utter most 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 something. This light, kindled in the great dark vortex of the Norse mind,' dark but living, waiting only for light ; this is to mc the centre of the whole. How such light will then shine- out, and with wondrous thousandfold expansion spread 10 itself, in forms and colours, depends not on //, 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. — Curious 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 always have stated what seemed to him z.fact, a real Appear- ance of Nature. But the way in which such Appearance or fact shaped itself, — what sort oi/act it became for him, - was and is modified by his own laws of thinking; deep, 20 subtle, but universal, ever-operating laws. The world of Nature, for every man, is the Phantasy^ 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 Iwchc, divisiblest of all, which could be halved, quartered, parted into three, into six, the most remarkable number, — 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 50 Twelve. So with regard to every other matter. And quite unconsciously too, — with no notion of building-up' 'Allego- ries i' t But the fresh clear glance of those First Ages would 1 IP IF II' Mind •■* IP IP H^ Fantasy 3H' IP HMmildingup THE HERO AS DIVINITY 31 be prompt in discerning tiie secret relations of things, and wholly open to obey these. Schiller finds in the Ccstus of Venus an everlasting .-vsthetic truth as to the nature of all Beauty ; curious : - but he is careful 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. lo Odin's KiiiiiS are a significant feature of him. Runes, .md the miracles of ' magic ' ho worked by them, make a great feature in tradition. Runes are the Scandinavian Alphabet; suppose Odin to have been the inventor of I.etters, 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 char- acters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first. Vou remember the astonishment and incre- dulity of Atahualpa, the Peruvian King ; how he made the 20 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 pos:,ible. 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 I'httnician-' Alphabet, but a native Scandinavian one. Snorro tells us farther that Odin invented Poetry ; the music of human speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it. Transport yourselves 3° into the early childhood of nations ; the first beautiful morning-light of our Europe, whv-'n all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great sunrise, and our Europe was first 1 JF IF 1 1 ' marking down -11' IP II' I'henician 11 i \\ > 1 m f 4 \ , \ W- Y ■■ » I:.!!! i 32 LECTLRES ON HEROES %:. •!?' I*: 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 Hero is a Hero at all points ; in the soul and thought of him first of all. I'his »o Odin, in his rude semi-articulate way, had a word to speak. A great heart laid open to take in this great Universe, 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 admire such a man beyond all others, what must these wild Norse souls, fi . awakened into thinking, have made of him ! To them, is yet without names for it, he was noble and noblest ; Hero, Prophet, God ; Wttotan, the greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however it speak or spell itself. Intrinsically, I 20 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 those English words we still use .' He worked so, in that obscure element. I5ut he was as a light kindled in it; a light of Intellect, rude Nobleness of heart, the only kind of lights ' 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 Norseman^; the finest 30 Teuton whom that race had yet produced. The rude Norse heart burst-up ^ into /'('////r/'/fjj- admiration round him; into iH' 11= the only light ''H' Type-Norseman; 11= Type-Northman; 3H' H=H^ burst up THE IIEKO AS DIVINITY 33 ) adoration. He is as a root of so many great tilings ; the fruit of liim is found growing, from deep thousands of ycHrs, over the whole field of 'i'eutonic Life. Our own Wednes- day, as I said, is it not still Odin'.s Day' Wcdnesbury, Wansborough, Wanstead, Wandsworth: Odin grew into Kngland too, these are still leaves from that lOot ! He v as the Chief (lod to all the Teutonic I'eoples, their I'attein Norseman ; - in such way did tliiv admire their Pattern Norseman'; that was the fortune he had in the world. Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, lo there is this huge Shadow of him which still projects it.self over the whole History of his I'eople. For this Odin once admitted lo be God, we can understand well that the whole Scandinavian Scheme of Nature, or dim No-scheme, whatever it might before have been, would now begin to develop'^ itself altogether differently, and grow thenceforth in a new manner. What this Odin saw into, and tausrht with his runes and his rhymes, the whole Teutonic People laid to heart and carried forward. His wav of thought became their way of thought : — such, under now conditions, 20 is the history of every great thinker still. In gigantic confused lineaments, like some enormous camera-c bscura shadow thrown upwards from tlic dead deeps of the Past, and covering the wliole Northern Heaven, is not that Scandinavian Mythology in soiae sort the Portraiture of this man Odin ? The gigantic image of his natural face, legible or not legible ther*;, expanded and confused in that manner! .\h, 'Thought, I say, is always Thought. No great man lives in vain. 'The History of the world is but the Biography of great men. ;,c To me there is something very touching in this primeval tigure of Heroism ; in such artless, helpless, but hearty entire leeeption of a iiero by his fellow -men. Never so iielpless ' IP If Northman -II' IT ; I ' tUvt'loiJe mam 34 LECTURES ON HEROES IK. '■' 'l 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 loitlwiit limit ; ah no, with limit enough ! But if we have no great men, or do not admire at all, — that were a still worse case. n This 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 chi'dlike way of recognising the divineness of Nature, the divineness of Man ; most rude, yet heartfelt, robust, giantlike; betokening what a giant of a man this child would yet grow to ! It " was a truth, and is none. Is it 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 u>c made of the ;o world : this is all the image and notion we could form to ourselves of this great mystery of a Life and Universe. Despise it not. You are raised high above it, to lar"-e free scope of vision ; but you too are not yet at the top. No, your notion too, so much enlarged, is but a partial, imper- fect 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 comprc-hend again a part of it: the thing is larger than man, not to be comprehended by him ; an Infinite thing ! " 30 The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all Pagan Mythologies, wl- found to be recognition of the divineness of Nature ; sincere comnuinion of man with the mysterious 'II' 11^ IP shew 2Ii' \v II' to! It THE HERO AS DIVINITY 35 invisible Powers visibly 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 characterist'.J of it. Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total want of old (Irecian grace. Sincerity, I think, is better than grace. I feel that these old Northmen were looking into Nature with open eye ana ^oul : 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, ic 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 reli- gion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction and epoch in Human Beliefs; a great landmark in the religious develop- ment of Mankind. Man lirst 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 20 Good and F.vil, of Thou sJuilt and Tltoii shalt not. With regard to all these fabulous delineations in the EMi, 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 compara- tively idle for the old Norseman, and as it were a kind of Pot^'^" 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 30 suppose, like other Faiths, was most active while it lay mainly in the silent state, and \vm\ not yet much to say about itself, still less to sing. Ill' 1'- II'grcalhL-artfd I ! I 36 LECTURES ON ItEKOES iiH Among those shadowy R,ida matters, a.r.iJ all that fan tastic congeries of assertions, and traditions in their m-isiral Mythologies, the main practical belief a man - ave was probably not much more than this: of the . . . ./-jand the Ilall of Oiiiii; of an inflexible Destiny; and that th ■ one thing needful for a man was to be hrmc The I'alkyrs 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 10 believer; — as iiuleed it is for all earnest men everywhere, .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 Valkxrs ; and then that these Choosers lead the brave to a heavenly Hall of Odin; only the base and slavish being thrust else- whither, 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 20 despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Con- sider 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 30 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. Now and always, the completeness of his victory over Fear will determine how much of u man he is. THE HERO AS D/r/X/TY 37 It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of the old Northmen. Snorro tells us they thouj^ht it a shame and misery not to die in battle ; and if natural 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 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, lo I say, than none. In the old Sea-kings too, what an indom- itable rugged energy ! Silent, with closed lip>, 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 IMakes and Nelsons ! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings ; but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, 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 gov- erning England at this hour. 20 Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea-roving and battling, through so many generations. It needed to be ascertained which was the strt>/ii^i-sl kind of men ; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the Northland Sover- eigns, too, I find some who got the title IVootf-cuttcr ; 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 ever live by fighting alone; there could not produce enough 30 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 i t :-"*J ¥ I: I 1 H« W IV blaze up 38 LKCTURKS OX l/EROKS 1 ,■' fc true valour, different enouprh from ferocity, is the basis of all. A more L-itimate itind of valour that ; showing' ' itself against the untamed lorests and dari< 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 forever with us ! That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice and heart, as with an impressiveness out of Heaven, told his People the infinite importance of Valour, how m.an thereby to 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 s.jems to me the primary seed grain of the Norse Religion, from which all manner of mythologies, sym- bolic practices, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas would naturally grow. (Jrow, - how strangely ! I called it a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was ulirc ; con- sider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed Mind 20 of the whole Norse People, longin- only to become articu- late, to go on articulating ever farther ! The living doctrine grows, grows; — like a Hanyan-tree ; the tirst sad is the essential thing: any branch strikes itself down into the earth, becomes a new root ; and so, in endless complexity, we have a wh le wood, a whole jungle, one seed the parent of it all. Was not the whole Xorse Religion, accordingly, in some sense, what we called 'the enormous shadow of this man's likeness'.' Critics trace some affinity in some Norse mythuses, of the Creation and suchlike,* with those 3° of the Hindoos. The Cow .Adumbia, 'licking the rime from the rocLs,' has a kind of Hindoo look. A Hindoo Cow, transported into frosty countries. Probably enough ; indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have a » II' IP Hi shewing ^ II> IP Hi such like r///; iiEh'o AS /i/r/x/ry j'> kindred with the remotest linds, with the earliest timea. Thoiijjht does not die, Init only is changed. I'he Hrst man that be«;m to think in this I'lanet of ours, he was the beginner ot all. And then the second man, and the third man; — nay, every true Thinker to this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men ///.r way of tliouj, .. 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 ; imr does it concern "c us much. Some wild I'rophecies we have, as the Voluspa ' in the I'.l.lir /u/ifti ; of a rapt, earnest, sil)\ Mine sort. iJut they were comparatively an idle adjunct of tiie matter, men who as it were but toyed with the matter, these later Skalds ; and it is t/uir son<,'s chiefly that survive. In later centu- ries, I suppose, they would <,'o on sinj^'inj;, poetically symbol- ising,'' as our modern I'ainters paint, wiien it was no longer from the innermost heart, or not from the heart at all. This is every here to be well kept in mind. Gray's fragments of Norse Lore, at any rate, will give :;c one no notion of it ; — any more than i'ope will of Homer. It is no square-built gloomy palace of black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as Oray gives it us : no ; rough as the North rocks, as the Iceland deserts, it is ; with a heartiness, homeliness, 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 sublimi- ties; they had not time to tremble. I like much iheir robust simplicity ; their veracity, directness of conception. Thor 'draws down his brows' in a veritable Norse rage; 3' •grasps his hammer till the i-'fUiMs- ^r'tno ivh.Ht-: Heautiful ' II' IF II' ILtvawal '^ 11' II-' II ' synil.olizing • II' HMI'goodhumour i n 40 /.KCTirRt-S ox /fHKOFS ■I *l traits of p'' oo, an hone»t pity. Ibhlcr • the white (lod ' dies; ♦' . -tMutifuI, l»eni},'nant ; he is the Sungod. They try all Nature for a remedy ; but he is dead. Frigga, his mother, sends Hermoder ' to seek or see him: nine days and nine nights he rides through gloomy deep valleys, a labyrinth of gloom ; arrives at the Bridge with its gold roof : the Keeper says, " \es, Haider did pass here ; but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far towards the North." Hermodtr "^ rides on ; leaps Hell-gate, Mela's 10 gate ; does see Haider, and speak with him: Haider cannot be delivered. Inexorable ! Hela will not, for ( )din or any God, give him up. The beautiful and gentle has to 'emain there. His Wife had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. They shall forever 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 I'ity too; — of Truth, and all that is great and good in man. The robust homely vigour of the Norse heart attaches one much, in 20 these delineat.ons. .s it not a trait of right honest strength, says Uhland, who has written a tine Ajj./.i -t I'hor, tiiat the old N(jrse heart finds its friend in the Thunder-god ? 'rh.a it is not frightened away by his thunder ; but finds that Summer-heat, the beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder withal ! The Norse heart loves this i'hor and his hammer-bolt ; sports with him. Thor is Summer- heat ; the god of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is the Peasant's friend ; his true henchman and attend- ant is 'ThiaUi, Mamuil Labour. I'hor himself engages in 30 all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business for its plebeianism ; is ever and anon travelling to the country of the Jotuns, harrying those c'^.aotic Frost-monsters, sub- 1 H' 11=' llerniode - II' H^' llermode ' II* W IP remembrance. — Tllh tlllh'O AS nirixiTY 41 duinjj them, at least .straitening and damaging them. The 2 is a great hroad humour in «,ome of these things. Thor, as we saw above, goes to jotun-land, to seek Hymir's Caldron,' that the (lods may brew beer. Hymir the huge (Jiant tnters his gray beard all full of hoar-frost ; splits pillars with the very glance of his eye ; I'hor, after much rough tumult, snatches the I'ot, claps it on his head ; the 'handles of it reach down to his heels' The Norse Skald has a kind of loving sport with i'hor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics have discovered, arc Ice- lo bergs. Huge untutored Ilrobdignag genius, needing only lo be tamed-down-; into Shakspeares, Dantes, (loethes! It is all gone now, that old N'orsc work, — I'hor the Thunder-god ' changed into J.u;k the (liant-killcr : 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. Ilymh- Etbi,^ and still more decisively Kid Ktin <>/ /tr/anJ, in 20 the Scottish Hallads. these a»e both derived from Norseland ; /■Ifin is evidently a Jotitn.'' Nay, Shakspeare's Iliimkt is a twig too of this same world-tree ; there seems no doubt of that. Hamlet, Amktli, I find, is really x mythic person.age ; and his Tragedy, of the poisoned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, and the rest, is a xNorse mythus ! Old Saxo, as his wont was, made it a Danish history ; Shaks- peare, out of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig of the world-tree that has ^vvti-//, I think; -by nature or accident that one has grown ! 30 \i .1 ., m^ -^ ^ ^ ' H' 11= IP Cauldron J !!• \\- \V tamed down ^ 11' H- ll^Thundergod * < IP W IP Chil.if Etitt in the .Scottish IJallads is a Xorse mythus; l:tiH was a Jotuii. m l:i ■1 'i 1 ''i 1 S |; iV I 42 LECTURES OX HEROES In fact, these old Norse songs have a /////// 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 traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what medi- tation has taught all men in all ages. That this world is lo after all but a show,' — a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that, -the Hindoo Mythologist, the (lerman Philosopher, — the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be : ' We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' One of Thor's expeditions, to Utgard (the (9// /tv- 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 20 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 his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and thitlier 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 l.id been only 30 the sHori/if^ of a certain enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by ; and » il' IIMl^shew - 11' ll^staiil Unstayed ' H' 11== H' turned out TJiK ih-:ko as D/y/jv//y 43 this thai they took for a h(jusc was merely his G/otc, thrown aside there ; the door was tliu (ilove-wrist ; the little closet they had Hed into was the Thumb! Such a glove ; — I remark too that it 'lad not tin-ers as ours have, but only a thumb, and the • ct ujuiivld^^d : a most ancient, rustic glove ! Skrymir no- carried thc.r portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had .is own suspi :ions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; deter... .t.^d ^i n'"ght 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 lo Giant merely awoke; rubbed his check, and said. Did a leaf fall ? Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow than before; but the Giant only 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 remarked. There must be sparrows roosting in this tree, I think ; what is that they have dropt ? — At the gate of Utgard, a place so higli that you had to 'strain your neck bending back to see the top of it,' 20 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; it was a 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 ("at he saw there ? Small as the feat seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could not ; he bent-up' the creature's back, could nf)t raise its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one foot. 30 Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people ; there is an f )ld Woman that will wrestle you ! Thor, heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old Woman ; but cuuld not ihrow her.' > H' IF H^ bent up i\ •^■t"'Hl 1 1; 44 LECTURES OX HEROES And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, escor'ing 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 dr.nk that, the bottomless ! The Cat you would have lifted, —why, that is the Mids^ard-snakc, 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 ! 10 As for the Old Woman, she was Thne, Old Age, Duration : with her what can wrestle ? No man nor no god with her ; gods or men, she prevails over all ! And then those three strokes you struck, — look at these ///m- T'«//fj.f ; 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-Zw/ziV was some Earth-cavern! But Skrymir had vanished; Utgard with its skyhigh gates, when Thor grasped his hammer to smite them, had gone to air ; only the Giant's voice was heard 20 mocking : " Better come no more to Jotunheim ! " — This is of the allegoric period, as we see, and half play, not of the prophetic and entirely devout : but as a mythus is there not real antique Xorse gold in it ? More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy, than in many a famed Greek Mythus shaped far better ! A great broad Brobdig- nag grin of true humour is in this Skrymir; mirth resting on earnestness and sadness, as the rainbow on black tem- pest : only a right valiant heart is capable of that. It is the srrim humour of our own ISen Jonson, rare old Ben ; 30 runs in the blood of us, I fancy : for one catches tones of t of the American Back- it, under a still other woods. ipe. i That is also a very striking conception that of the Kag 1 11' H^ 11' keeps up THE HERO AS DIVINITY 45 narok, ( onsummation, or 'Iwiliglit of the Gods. It is in the Voluspa ' Song ; seemingly a very old, prophetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine I'owers and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and partial victory by the former, meet at last in universal world-embracing wrestle and duel ; World-serpent against Thor, strength against strength ; mutually extinctive ; and ruin, 'twilight ' sinking into dark- ness, 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 Karth ; a higher supreme (iod, ic 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 phcenix - tire-deaih, and new-birth into the Greater and the Better! It is the fun- damental Law of Being for a creature made of lime, living in this Place of Hope. All earnest men have seen into it ; may still see into it. And now - .nnected with this, let us glance at the last 20 mythus oi tearance of Thor ; and end there. I fancy it to be the a in date of all these fables ; a sorrowinijr protest against the advance of Christianity, -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 I'agan people, in battle, in the year 1033, .- -'cickelstad, near that Drontiieim, where the chief Cathedral of the North has now .stood for many cen- 3c turie-s, 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 1 11' 11= IP Ilavamal 2 IP IV W riiccnix i '■■ I n 46 LECTURES ON HEROES fA'^' shore of Norway, from haven to haven ; dispensinjj justice, or doinj5 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 stept in. The courtiers address him ; his answers surprise by their pertinency and depth : at length he is brought to the King. The stranger's conversation 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 10 the sun shining on it there ; green, fruitful, a right fair home for you; and mary a sore day had Thor, many a wild fight with the rock Jotuns, before he could make it so. And now you seem minded to put away Thor. King Olaf, have a care ! " said the stranger, drawing-dov.n * 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 t It is the way 20 most (iods have come to appear among men : thus, if in Pindar's time ' Neptune was once seen at the Nemean Games,' what was this Neptune too but a ' stranger of noble grave aspect,' — fit to be 'seen'! I'liere is something pathetic, tragic f(>r 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 highest things. All things that have been in this world, all things that are or will be in it, have to van- ish : we have our sad farewell to give them. 30 That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly impres- sive Consecration of Valour (so we may define it), sufficed for these old valiant Northmen. Consecration of Valour is not a bad thing ! Wo will take it for good, so far as it II' W IF drawing down THE IIEKO AS DIVINITY 47 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. For the whole Past, as I ke» ,j repeating, is the possession of the Present ; the Past had always some- thing tnu\ 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 'c itself. The actual True is the sum of all these ; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. " To which of these Three Religions do you spe- cially adhere ? " 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." ii \ r LKCTURK [l TUK UKRO AS I'ROIMIKI'. MAiioMr.r: islam [Friday, 8th May 1.S40.] ' From the first rude times of I'aganism among the Scan- dinavians in the North, we advance to a verv different epoch of religion, among a very ditierent people: Mahom- etanism 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 fel- low-men ; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It is the second phasis of Hero-worship : the first or oldest, we 10 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 sa-to there standing beside them a god, the maker of this world .' Perhaps not ; it was usually some man they remembered, or had seen. Hut neither can this" any more" be. The Great Man is not recognised henceforth as a god any more. It was a rude gross error, that of counting the (ireat 20 Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know 7i H' H' H' hundred and eighty - 11' II' IF twelve hundred Till. iiEKo AS rnoriiiyr 51 Age of Scepticism ; they ' indiciitc the siuUicsl spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men : more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Karth. A false man found a religion ? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house ! If he do not know and follow tritly the properties of mortar, burnt clay and wIkxI else he works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish-heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lod;;e a hundred- and-eighty- millions; it will fall strai-^htway. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws. A- verily in connnunion lo with Nature and the truth of thinj^s, or Nature will answer him, No, not at all! Speciosities are specious - ah me! — a C'agliostro, many Cagliostros, prominent world-leaders, do prosper by their cpiackery, for a day. It is like a forged bank-note ; they get it passed out of ///(V/ worthless hands: others, not they, have to smart for it. Nature bursts-up'' in fire-flames, French Revolutions and suchlike,^ proclaiming with terrible veracity that forged notes are forged. But of a (ireat Man especially, of him I will venture to assert that it is incredible he should have been other than 20 true. It seems to me the primary foundation of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No Mirabeau, Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man adequate to do anything, but is hrst of all in ri.,iit earnest about it; what I call a sincere man. I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincTfr^ ^ ity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic, j Not the sincerity that calls itself sincere; ah no, that is a' very poor matter indeed ; —a shallow br.aggart conscious' sincerity; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The (Ireat Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious 3° of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of ///sincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for Pi^ A i«<.///;H'. IP HMhey 2 H" II' IP hundred and eighty ' IP H= H' bursts up < H' W IP such like ■■■ 1, 1 '^'•ri . I 52 LECTL'KES OX IH.KOF.S one day ? No, the (ireat Man does not boast iiimself sin- I cere, far from that ; perha|)s does not ask himself if he is so : I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on / himself; he cannot help bLin<; sincere! The j;reat Fact of Kxistence is jjreat to him. i'ly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so I made ; he is jjreat by that, first of all. Fearful and won- I derful, real as F-ife, real as Death, is this Universe to h\m. Though all men shou'd forget its truth, and walk in a vain lo show, he cann(»t. At all moments the Flame-ima^e glares- J 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 (Jod has made; but a (Ireat Man cannot be without it. Such a man is what we call an ori^iiiii/ man ; he comes to us at first-hand." A messenger he, seht from the Infinite Unknov, i with tidings to us. We may call him I'oet, I'ropliiit, (od ; — in one way or other, we all feel that the words he utters are as no other man's word.s. Direct from .:o 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; // glares-in " upon him. Really his utterances, are they not a kind of 'revelation ;' — what we must call such for 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 : but this man too, has not God made him, the latest and newest of all ? The 'inspiration of the Almighty giveth /lim understanding:' 30 we must listen before all to him. This Mahomet, then, we will in no wise consider as an Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious ambitious » H' 11= H' glares in M I' 11= H> first hand 'i II' H' H^ glares in W^. \ ■ tf THE nh.Ko AS rh'o /'///■:/' VI schemer; \vi: cannot conceive him so. The riule 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 workinjjs here below ; no Inanity and Simula- crum ; a fiery mass of F,ife cast-up' from the j;reat bosom of Nature herself. To kin,//,- the world; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of Mahomet, if such were never so well proved against him, shake this ,,rimary fact about him. On the whole, we make too much of £4n,lts ; the details lo 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 Hible above all, one would think, might know bett'-'r. Who is called there 'the man according to (lod's own heart'? David, the Hei)rew Kia;;, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want (»f sins. And thereupon the unl)elievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to (lod'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 theTnner secret "of it, 2a the remorse, "temptations, true, often-baflled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten ? ' It is not in man that walketii to direct his steps.' Of all acts, is not, for a man, y.-peitUvhc 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. I )avid'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 jc ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul toward.s what is good and best. Struggle often baftled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle never Mf 11= IP cast up /I s» /./urtK'f'S ox m-.h'ois ended ; ever, with tears, re|>entance, true iinct>n(|ucral)]e purpose, he};un anew. Poor human nature ! Is not a man's walkinj;, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struj;gle onwards ; now fallen, deep-abased ; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleedin;; heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. I'hat his struggle l>c a faithful unconquerable one : that is the cpiestion of questions. We will put-up ' with many sad details, if the soul of it were lo true. Details by themselves will never teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate- 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 ourselves that he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it was or might be. \i v^S i These .Vrabs Mahomet was born among arc certainly a notable peo])le. I'heir country itself is notable; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage inaccessible rock-moun- tains, great grim deserts, alternating with beautiful strips 20 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 Tniverse ; by day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable radiance ; by night the great deeji Heaven with its stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deei^-Iiearted race of men. There is something most agile, active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the Aral) character. The Persians are 30 called the French of the Fast ; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italiatis. A :;iftLil iiiibic pciiplc; a people of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these : the char- » H' H» W put up a H' mis-estimate ■\ /■/// HI hit AS /'Ai'/'Z/f-:/' 5.< .icteristic of nohlcmindfdness, ui Kcnius. The wild Itedotiin welcomes the .stranger to his tent, .is one having ri^^ht lo all that is there; were it his worst enemy, he will sUy 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 Nniuacious |)eo|)le, taciturn rather ; but eloquent, gifted when they do speak. An earnest, truthful kind of mun. Ilu;y are, as we know, of Jewish kindred : but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the lo lews they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, which is not Jewish. I hey had ' I'oetic 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, I'oets sang for prizes: — the wild people gathered to hear that. One Jewish quality these .Xrabs manifest ; the outcome of many or of all high qualities : what we may call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous worshippers, acc^ording to their light, rhey worshipped the stars, as .Sabeans ; 20 worshipped many natural objects, ^ recognised them as symbols, immediate manifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong ; and yet not wholly wrong. .Ml (iod's works are still in a sense symbols of (iod. Do we not, as I urged, still account it 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 speaking 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. Hut .^0 indeed, have we not from of old the noblest of proofs, still palpable to every one of us, of wliat devoutness and noble- mindedness ' had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples > MI' nohlf-mindedness !f ! I t 5 !" 5C. LECTURES OX llEROIiS I I Hiblical critics seem aj;;reed that our own Booi 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 patriotism 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 lo 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 Horse, — 'hast thou I clothed his neck with tliniuh'! f — he 'laiig/is dii the sl.aking 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 20 and stars ! There is nothing written»_I^ think, in the Bible or out of it, ofequal^terary merit. — To tTie idolatrous Arabsone of the most ancient universal objects of worship was that lilack Stone, still kept in the buildin this first distinction, which indeed we may as jpeat. 1 II' IP IP glared ii rilK IlKKO AS PROPHET 63 call first and last, the Alpha and Omega of his whole Hero- ism, That he looks through the shows' of things into Ihini^s. Use and wont, respectable hearsay, respectable formula: all these are* good, or are'' not good. There is something behind and beyond all these, which all these must correspond with, be the image of, or they are— AA;/- atrics; 'bits of black wood pretending to be God; ' to the earnest soul a mockery and abomination. Idolatries never so gilded, waited on by heads of the Koreish, will do noth- ing for this man. Though all men walk by them, what lo good is it ? The great Reality stands glaring there upon him. He there has to answer it, or perish miserably. Now, even now, or else through all Eternity never! Answer it; llion must find an answer. — Ambition ? What could all Arabia do for this man ; with the crown of (Jreek 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 tel 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 20 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 impostor hypothesis,* as not credible ; not very tolerable even, worthy chiefiy of dismissal by us. Mahomet had been went to retire yearly, during the month Ramadhan, into s.iiitude and silence; as indeed was the Arab custom ; a praiseworthy custom, which such a man, above all, would find natural and useful. Com- muning with his own heart, :n the silence of the moun- 30 tains ; himself silent ; open to the ' small still voices : ' it 1 H« W W shews 3 H" W is 2 H' IP this is 4 H' IP H^ Shiek * H' IP impostor-hypothesis ^Bk J*' fl if' ' I i :; II f^ 64 LECTURES ON HEROES was a right natural custom ! Mahomet was in his fortieth year, when havinj; withdrawn to a cavern in Mount Hara, near Mecca, durinjj this Ram tdhan, 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 un- speakable 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 l-'ormul is were nothing, 10 miserable bvts 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. '■Allah ' . am not I better than Kadijah ? She was a widow ; jld, 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 would believe. In the whole world I had but one friend, and she was that ! " — Seid, his Slave, also 'relieved in him ; these with his young 30 Cousin All, Abu Thaleb's son, were his first converts. He spc 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 enougli. His encouragement to go on, THR UK HO AS PKOrHET (>7 was altogether the usual encourafjement 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 enter- tainment ; and there stood-up ' and told them what his pretension was: that he had this thin;; to promulgate abroad to all men ; that it was the highest thing, the one thing: which of them would second him in t'lat? Amid the doubt and silence of all, young Ali, as yet a lad of six- teen, impatient of the silence, started-up,- and exclaimed in passionate fierce language, Ihat he would ! ihe assembly, lo among whom was Abu Thaleb, Ali's lather, could not be unfriendly to Mahomet ; yet the sight there, of one unlet- tered 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, or» cannot but like him. A noble-minded creature, as he sh ws^ himself, now and always afterwards ; full of atleotion, of tiery daring. Some- thing chivalrous in him ; brave as a lion ; yet with a grace, 20 a truth and affection worthy of Christian knighthood. He died by assassination in the Mosque at liagdad; a death occasioned by his own generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others: hesaid, 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 Cod, and see which side of that quarrel was the just one ! Mahomet naturally gave otTence to the Koreish, Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. One or two 30 men of influence had joined him : the thing spread slowly, but it was spreading. Naturally he gave ofTence to every- til 1 ' H' IP IP stood up MI' 11 IP started up , Ijl, 3 H' W IPInoke up MP IP IP. shews '■:^ I lip i «• LECTURES ON HEROES body : Who Uiis that pretends to be wiser than we all ; that rebukes us wW, as mere fouls and worshippers of wood ! Abu Thaleb the vod Uncle spoke with him : Could he not be silent ab ' ti hat ; believe it all for himself, and not trouble other . ;^" ;> r the chief men, endanger himself and them all, • kinj li it? Mahomet answered: If the Sun stood on h - i;',iit I \nd and the Moon on his left, orderinji him to holo his v. .re, he r^uld not obey ! No ; there was something n i ).■ 1 n'rh ' ! . I got which was of Nature 10 herself; en.i n f-;'. ; . oun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Naiur h lu .. * . It would speak itself there, so long as the .' Imigh . 'owed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, and all Koi ish :tuJ ili men and things. It must do that, and could do no other. Mahomet answered so ; and, they say, 'burst into tears.' liurst 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 ; pub- lishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they came to 20 Mecca ; gaining adherents in this place and that. Contin- ual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger attended him. His powerful relations protected Mahomet himself; but by and by, on his own 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 rh;ileb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mahomet is not solicitous of sympathy from us : but his outlook at this time was one of the dismalest.'- He 30 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 1 H' quite « m ^a h^ dismallest » H» II» H^ aU over THK HKKO AS PKOPltKT (A like, whether Mahomet and his Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. Hut it was not to end so. In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded aj^ainst 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 Hed to the place then called \athreb, where he had gamed some adherents; the place they now call Medina, or ' A/ciwit a/ AaN, the City of the Prophet,' from that circumstance. It lay some .c 200 miles off, through rocks ind deserts ; not without great dirticulty. in such mor.d a. we may fancy, he escaped thither, and found welcome. The whole Kast dates its era from this Flight, J/igh,7 as th y name it: the Year i of this Hegir.i is 622 of our Kr.i, the tifty-third of Mahomet's life. He vas now becoming an old man : his friends sink- in- round ^um one by one ; his path desolate, encmpassed with dan-ur: 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 liad 20 rr-.fessed to publish his Religion by tlu- way of preaching anti persuasion alone. Hut now, driven foully out of his native country, since unjust men had not only ^iven no ear to his earnest Heaven •s-mess;ige, the deep cry of I is ht =1. but would not even let him live if he kept speaking it, - the wild Son of the Desert r. solved t.. defend niself like a man and Arab. If the Koreish will have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, felt to be of infinite m. ment to them and all men, tiiey would not listen to th se : would trample them down by sheer violence, steel am n irder well let 30 steel try it then ! Ten years more 'ns M ihomet had ; all of righting, of breathless impetuous t< il and struggle; with what result we know. Much has been said of Mahomet's pro; gating his Keli- !i 70 LECTURES ON HEROES gion 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 tliis 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 lo a. I might say to many a man : Yes, you are pure ; pure enough ; but you are chaff, — insincere hypothe- sis, hearsay, formality ; you never were in contact with the great heart of the Universe at all ; you are properly neither pure nor impure ; you an 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 iriti if I ."I ■ . Xf: . \ 1 % ■y . ■{. 72 LECTURES OAT HEROES janglings about Hotnoiousion and Homoousion, the head full of worthless noise, the heart empty and dead ! 'I'he truth of it is embedded 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 10 wiredrawings, this wild man of the Desert, with his wild sincere heart, earnest as death and life, with his great flashing natural eyesight, 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 Hies 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 20 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 30 World. He is in harmony with the Decrees of the Author of this World; cooperating'' with them, not vainly v/ith- standing them : I know, to this day, no better definition of 1 H' W \V flesh and blood 2 h' W \V fw paragraph. 8 H' H' H' cooperating TJIE JIhRO AS PROPHET 73 Duty than that same. All that is ;-/>/// inchides itself in this of cooperating ' with the real I'cndency of the World • you succeed by this (the World's iendency will succeed) you are good, and in the rigju course there. Jfomoiousiou //omoousw,,, vain logical jairgie, then or before or at any time, may jangle iiselt out, and go whither and how it likes ■ this is the f/iwi^r it all struggles to mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not succeed in meaning this, it means nothmg. Not that Abstractions, logical Propositions, be correctly worded or incorrectly ; but the living concrete .o Sons of Adam do lay this to heart: that is the important point. Islam devoured all these vain jangling Sects ; and I think had right to do so. It was a Realitv, 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 >•/, in various senses, for this which was yfn*. It was during these wild warfarings and strugglin,jr, 'Thing to be read.' I'his is the' Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking all the world. Is not that a miracle .' I'he Mahometans regard their Koran with a reverence which few ( hristians pay even to their iJible. It is admitted everywhere as the standard of all law and all practice ; the thing to be gone-uijon - in speculation and hfe: the message sent direct out of Heaven, which this Karth has to conform to. and walk by; the thing to be read. Their Judges decide by it ; all Moslem are bound to >tudy it, seek in it for the light of their life. Thev have 30 mosques where it is all read daily ; thirty relays of priests take it up in succession, get through the whole each dav ' II' 11= II' coo])erating 2H' IIMlJgoneupon 1% f ■> vm 74 LECTURES OS' HEROES !. iJi There, for twelve-hundred ' years, has the voice of this Book, at all moments, kept sounding through the ears and the hearts of so many men. We hear of Mahometan Doc- tors that have read it seventy-thousand" times! Very curious: if one sou^t for 'discrepancies of na- tional 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 10 confused jumble, crude, incondite ; endless iterations, long- windedness,' entanglement; most crude, incondite ; — in- supportable stupidity, in short ! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any F.uropean through the Koran. We read in it, as v.c might in the State-l'aper Office, unreadable masses of lumber, that perhaps we may get some glimpses of a remarkable man. It is true we have it under disad- vantages : the Arabs see more method in it than we. Ma- homet's followers found the Koran lying all in fractions, as it had been written-down * at first promulgation ; much of 20 it, they say, on shoulder-blades of mutton, flung pell-mell into a chest : and they published it, without any discover- able 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 short- est. Read in its historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic ; a kind of wild chanting '■ song, in the original. "Ihis may be :i great point ; much perhaps has been lost in the Translati.ni 30 here." Vet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to sec how anv mortal ever covild consider this Koran as a Hock ' IP n= H' twuvc hundred ♦ IP IP H^ writt.-n down '-; IP IP W seventy thousand '•> IP 11^ H' chaunting '» H' n^ FP lon^windedness " * rot in \\\,i/ H'you - H' FIMI'cnn.. II' H-' tfigrey * IP \\- HMiunrrout 80 LECTURES ON IIENOES •i ,( i L ii' 1^ ! W everywhere of an unsiJeakahU; I'ower, a Splendour, and a Terror not to be named, as the true force, essence and re- ality, in all things whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. What a modern talks-of ' by the name, !• orces of Nature, Laws of Nature; 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-shii)s ! With our Sciences and Cyclopa'dias, we are apt to forget the tihunawis, in those laboratories of ours. 10 We ought not to forget it ! That once well forgotten, I know not what else were worth remembering. Most sciences, I think, were then a very dead thing; withered, contentious, empty ; a thistle in late autunui. I'he 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 huow either, unless he can wors/iip in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and dead thistle, otherwise. Much has been said and written about the sensuality 20 of Mahomet's Religion ; more than was just. 'I'he indul gences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were not of his appointment ; he found them practised, unquestioned from immemorial time in .\rabia ; 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 complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence 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 3° to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hoi^c of pleasure, recompense, sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or in the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to 1 II' W IV talks of THE I/EA'O AS PROPHET 81 be shot, has his 'honour of .1 soldier,' different from drill- regulations and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate him self under (Jod'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. Ihey wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death are the iilliimnaits that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a riame that burns-up- all lower 10 considerations. Not happiness, but something higher : one seos this even in the frivolous classes, with their 'point of honour ' and the like. Not by Hatlering our appetites : 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 vtjluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments, - nay on enjoyments of any kind. His house- hold was of the frugalest ^ his common diet barley-bread -0 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, jxitch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, ill-provided man ; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man. I should say ; something better in him than hun;r^,- of any sort, — or these wild .Arab men, righting and jostling three-and-twenty * years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not have rever- enced him so! They were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of rierce sincerity ; with- jo out right worth and manhood, no man could have com- manded them. They called him Prophet, you say >. Why, Ml' IF IP .Shew ■^ H' H> IP burns up » H' frugallfst * H' three and twenty ^y ■11 82 LECrUKhS ox HtKOtS li ^i he stood there face to face with thcni ; l),ire, not enshrined in any mystery ; visibly cloiitin;^ his (jwn cloak, cobblinji; his own shoes; tif^htin;;, cDimsellin;;, orderinj^ in the midst of them : they must iiave sctii w hat kind of a man ' he 74'orsr ; it made him better; good, not bad. (lenerous things are recorded of him: when he lost his Daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, everyway * sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians, • The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.' He answered in like manner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the second of the believers. Seid hatl fallen in the War of 20 Tabuc, the first of Mahomet's fightings with the (Ireeks. ^L1homet said, It was well; Seid had done his Master's work, Seid had now gone to his >Lister; it was all well with Seid. Vet Seid's daughter found him weeping over the body; — ^the old gray-haired"' man melting in tears! "What do I see .' " said she. — " Vou see a friend weeping over his friend." — He went out for the kist time into the moscpie, two days before his death ; asked, If he had in- jured any man ? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, "Ves, me thnci 30 drachms," borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet or- dered them to be paid : " Better be in shame now," said » H" W W of man » H' H» IP struggling up ^ \V three and twenty * IP H' IP every way 5 H^ grey-haired nui ni'iho AS j-A'o/ ///./' 83 he, "than at the Day of h.d-.nent." \ .„. r.nu-mber Kadijah. and the "No, hy Allah:" Traits of that kind show us the jrenuinc man. the brother of ,.s all. l.rouKht visible thr.,„f;h twelve centuries, the veritable Son of our common Mother. Withal I like Mahomet for his total frcKJo/n from cant He IS a ro»-h, self-helj.injr sl shoesof his own clout- .0 injr; s|3eaks plainly to all main... r ol Persian Kin-s. (Ireek Kmperors, what u is they arc bound to do; kn'ows well enough, about hims If, 'the rc^pc t due uni.. ihtx.' In a life-and-death war with iJedouins. cruel tl.m.s cul.l not fail • but neither are acts of mercy, of nob! ■ nati.r.l pitv and -en- erosity wantin- Mahomet makes .„. ap.,lu"v fo'r the one no boast of the other. They were each the ftee dictate of his heart ; each called for,' there and tiien. Not a mealv- mouthed man ! A candid feroc.ty. if the case call for it. is m him ; he does not mince matters ! The War of Tabi c 'o IS a thing he often six-aks 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 for-et that. \our harvest .> It lasts for a dav. What will be- come of your harvest through all Kternit v ? I lot weather ' Ves, it was hot; 'but Hell will be hotte'r ! ' Sometimes a rough sarcasm turns-up«: He says to the unbelievers. Ye shall have the just measure of your deeds at that (Ireat Day They will be weighed-out » to you; ye shall not have short weight ! — Everywhere he fixes the matter in his eye ; he 30 .wj It: his heart, now and then, is as if struck dumb by the greatness of it. • Assuredly, " he says : that word, in the »H«H»H3 called for » H" H» IP turns up •■' ri' IP IP weighed out I i J; ■ ' ..jl 1 1 I -1 ' 84 LECTURES ON HEROES V -i ! : 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 ! Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of amateur-search for Truth, toying and coquetting with Truth : this is the sorest sin. The root of all other imaginable sins. It consists in the heart and soul of the man never having been open to 'Truth ; — ' living in a lo vain show.' Such a m.in not only utters and produces false- hoods, but is himself a falsehood. 'I'he rational moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk deep in him. in quiet paralysis of life-death. The very falsehoods of Ma- homet 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 anybody; most cleanly, — just as carbonic acid is, which is death and poison. We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as always 20 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 revenge yourself, but it is to be in measure, not overmuch, or beyond justice. On the other hand, Islam, like any great Faith, and insight into the essence of man, is a perfect equaliser ' of men : the soul of one believer out weighs all earthly kingships; all men, according to Islam 30 too, are equal. Mahomet insists nut on the propriety of giving alms, but on tlie necessity of it : lie marks-down * by law how much nou arc to give, and it is a^ your peril il you neglect. I'he tenth part of a man's annual irtcomc, 1 II' II- II « e(iiKili/ti - II' IF II' marks down ' THR HF.RO AS PROPl/ET 85 whatever that may be, is the property of the poor, of those that are afflicted and need help. Good all this : the natural 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. lUit we are to recollect that the .\iabs already had it so ; that Mahomet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and diminished all this. The worst sensualities, too, are the work of doctors, followers of his, lo not his work. In the Koran there is really very little said about the joys of Paradise ; they are intimated rather than insisted 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. « Ve shall sit on seats, facing one another : all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts.' All grudges ! Ve shall love one another 20 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 Mahom- et's sen-uality, the sorest chapter of ail 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 (Joethe; it is a casual hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In one of his Delineations, in Master's Travels it is, the hero comes-upon ' a .Society of men with 30 very strange ways, one of which was this: "We require," says the Master, " that each of our people shall restrict l.imself in one direction," shall go right against his desire ' H' IIMT'coiTiHs ujxm ■Sfes s r f - ■ V 86 I.ECTURLS OX HEROES i¥; in one maticr, 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. En- joying 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 otlf, on cause shown ' : this is an excellent law. I'he Month Ramadhan for the Moslem, much in Mahomet's Religion, much in his own 10 Life, bears in that direction ; if not by forethought, or clear purpose 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 Mahom- etan Heaven and Hell. This namely, that, however gross and material tiiey may be, they are an emblem of an ever- lasting truth, not always so well remembered elsewhere. That gross sensual Paradise of his ; that horrible flaming Hell ; the great enormous Day of Judgment he perpetually insists on : what is all this but a rude shadow, in the rude 20 Bedouin imagination, of that grand spiritual Fact, and Beginning of lacts, 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 moment to him, and never die or / end at all ; that man, with his little life, reaches upwards high as Heaven, downwards low as Hell, and in his three- score years of Time holds an Ktcrnity fearfully and wonder- fully hidden : all this had burnt itself, as in flame-charac- ters, into ihe wild Arab soul. As in flame and lightning, it stands writlon there; awful, unspeakable, ever present to 30 him. Witii l)urstini,f earnestness, with a tierce savage sin- cerity, half-articulating, not able to articulate, be strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in what way you will, it is the lirst of all '■ ii' 11- i I '.-hewn THE HE NO AS PKOP//ET fit f truths. It is venerable under all embodiments. 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 does not, like a Hentham, 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 addi- tion and subtraction into a net result, ask you, Whether on the whole the Right does not preponderate considerably ? No ; it is not In-tla- to do the one than the other ; the one is to the other as life is to death, —as Heaven is to Hell. lo Ihe one must in nowise be done, the other in nowise left undone. You shall not measure them ; they are incom- mensurable : the one is death eternal to a man, the other is lite eternal. IJenthamee Utility, virtue by Profit and Loss; reducing this (lod'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! 20 On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Ma- homet's is a kind of Christianity; has a genuine element of what is spiritually highest looking through it, not to be hidden by all its imperfections. The Scandinavian (lod 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 welldoing, by valiant action, and a divine patience which is still more valiant. It is Scandinavian Paganism, .ind a truly celestial element su^ieradded to that, fall it not false ; look not at 30 the falsehood of it, look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it has been the religion and life-guidance of the fifth part of the wholt- kindred of Mankind. Above all things, it has been a religion heartily helured. These N 88 LECTURES ON HEROES \ I Arabs believe their religion, and try to live by it ! No Christians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the Eng- lish Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their Faith as the Moslem do by theirs, -believing it wholly, fronting Time with it, and Kternity with it. This night the watchman on the streets of Cairo when he cries, "Who goes ? " will hear from the passenger, along with his an- swer, "There is no (iod but (iod." Allah akl>ai% hhm. sounds through the souls, and whole daily existence, of 10 these dusky millions. Zealous missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black Papuans, brutal Idolaters; — displac- ing what is worse, nothing that is better or good. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light ; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, 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 one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on 20 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 unnoticeable 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 Heaven ; the 30 rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame. h * LECTURE III THE HKR') AS POKT. KANTK; SHAKSPKARE [T- esday, i;th May 1.S40.J ' 'The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are produc- tions of old ages ; not to be repeated in the new. I'hey presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, 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. Dhinity and I'rophet are past. We are now to see our Hero in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, character of I'oet ; a character which 10 does not pass. I'he 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 uhen Nature pleases. Let Nature send a Hero-soul ; in no age is it other than possible that he may be sl^aped into a Poet. Hero, Prophet, Poet, — many different names, in differ- ent 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 --o many more names, on this same principle. I will remark agam, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such M I' 1 1= M ' d„te ,/Mv title. M I ' 1 1- H^ fellow man Sg I •: ■;2t n? J 90 M IIP 1 1 ■ i , f ili'l it nti LECTURES ON J/EKOES distinction ; that the Hero can be 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 a// sorts of men. The Poet who could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing the Heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a Heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the Politician, the Thinker, Legislator, i'hilosopher ; — in one or the other lo degree, he could have been, he is all these. So too I can- not understand how a Mirabeau, with that great glowing heart, with the tire that was in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all hearts in that way, had his course of life and education led him thitherward. The grand fun- damental character is that of (Ireat Man ; that the man be great. Napoleon has words in him which are like Auster- litz Battles. Louis Fourteenth's Marshals are a kind of poetical men withal ; the things Turenne says are full of 20 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 prosper at all without these. Petrarch .nd Boccaccio did diplomatic meijsages, it seems, quite wdl : one can easily believe it : they had done things a little harder than theseM Burns, a gifted song-writer, might have made a still better Mira beau. Sh?kspeare, — one knows not what /le could not have made, in the supreme degree. True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature docs 30 not make all great meif5 more than all other men, in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless ; but in finitely more of circumstance; and f.r oftenest it is tlic latter only that are looked to. But it is as with common » ir li- that! TtfE t/EkO AS POKT 91 men in the learning of trades. You take any man. as yet a vague capabiluy of a man. who could be any kind of crafts- man; and make him into a smith, a carpenter, a mason: he .s then and thenceforth that and nothing else. \nd if as Addison complains, you sometimes see a street-porter staggering under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at hand a ta.lor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of cloth and small Whitechaix-l needle, - it cannot be con- sidered that aptitude of Nature alone has been consulted here either ! -^ The Great Man also, to what shall he be ,o bound apprentice? Given your Hero, is he to become ( onqueror. King. Philosopher. Poet ? It is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation between the world and h.m ! He will read the world and its laws ; the world with Its laws will be there to be read. What the world, on t/.is matter, shall permit and bid is, as we said. th« most impor- tant fact about the world. — Poet and I'rophet differ greatly in our loose modern no- t.ons of them. In some old languages, again, the titles are synonymous; Vatcs means both Prophet and Poc-t : and 20 indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, well understood, have much kindred of meming. Fundamentallv 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 Tniverse ; what (loethe calls 'the open secret.' "Which is the great secret.'" asks one - "I he open secret,"- open to all, seen by almost none - I hat divme mystery, which lies everywhere in all Hein.^s 'the Divme Idea of the World, that which lies at the' bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte styles it; of which all 30 Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of the field but especially the Appearance of Man and his work, is buJ the vesture, the embodiment that renders it visible This «^ 1 CE) LECTURRS ON HEROES \\k divine mystery h 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^t her dialect, as the realise d Thought of God , is considered a trivial, inert, commonplace matter, — as if, says the Satirist, it were a dead thing, which some upholsterer had put together ! 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 ; 10 — a failui',' to live at all, if we live otherwise ! But now, 1 say, whoever may fort^et this divine mystery, the Fr. 4j, whether Prophet or Poet, lias 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 present with. While others forget it, he knows it ; - I might say, he has been driven to know it ; without con- sent asked of ///>«, he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct 20 Insight and Belief ; this man too could not help being a sincere in.in ! Whosoever may live in the shows' of things, it is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very fact ol things. .V man once more, in earnest with the Universe, though all 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 Witt^ Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and Pro 30 hibition ; the Vatcs Poet on what the Germans call th' aisthetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The one wc nia\ call a revealer of what we are to do, the other of what w' are to love. iJut indeed these two provinces run into one » H'HJshews ^ ■ n- rt/E jii.tio AS roEi- 93 another, and cannot be disjoined. The Prophet too has h.s eye on what we are to love : how else shall we 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 IJeauty. ' The lilies of the 'field ' -dressed finer than earthly princes, springing-up-' there in the humble furrow-field ; a beautiful eye looking-out " on you from the great inner Sea of Ifeauty I How could the rude .c Karth make these, if her Kssence, rugged as she looks and IS, were not inwardly Heauty .' In this point of view, too a saying of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have meaning: 'The I5eautiful,' he intimates, 'is higher than the (lood ; the Heautiful includes in it the (lood ' Ihe/r//^ Beautiful; which however. [ have said some- where, 'ditters from the >/.v,- as Heaven does from V.mx- hall ! • So much for the distinction and identity of J'oet and Prophet. — In ancient and also in modern periods we find a few Poets 20 who are accounted perfect ; whom it were a kind of trea- son to hnd fault with. This is notewoithv ; this is right • yet in strictness it is only an illusion. At bottom, cleariv enough, there is no perfect Poet ! A vein of Poetry .vists in the hearts of all men; no man is made alto^rether of J oetry. We are all poets when we /,„,/ a poem well. The 'imagination that shudders at the Hell of Dante,' is not '^lat the same faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own? No one b. t Shakspeare can embodv, out of Saxo aninwuU- "V/>-. the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did : but everv one 3c models some kind of story out of it; every one embodies •t better or worse. We need not spend time in defininij. »II"ll-||'l.;a„h -H'H= re. springing up » II' IM IP looking out t ' ■ f !j *' ! i 1 LKCTUKES OAT //f-JtO/iS !l.t ^' t. Where thirc is no specific difference, as between round and square, all definition 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 I'oet by his neighbours. World- i'oets t 10, those whom we are t<) take for perfect I'oets, are »ettl«;d by critics in :he same way. One who rises so f.it al>ove the general level of I'oets will, to such and such critics, sf'em a Universal I'oet ; as he ought to do. And yet it is. .md must be, an arbitrary 10 distinction. All PcK'ts all men, have some touches of the Universal ; no man is wholly made of that. Most I'oets are very soon forgotten : but not the noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be remembered yi»/*«',/i that lies hidden in it; the inward har- mony 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 melodious; naturally utter themselves in Song. The meaning of Song gcjes deep. \\'ho 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 Inlinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that ! Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has some- ro thing of song in it : not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent;- the rhythm or /////. to which the jK'ople there sing what they have to say ! Accent is a kind of chanting =*; all men have accent of their own, though they only notia- that of others. Observe too how all pas- sionate language does of itself become musical, — with a liner nmsic than the mere accent ; the siK-ech of a man even in zealous 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 wrappages and 20 hulls ! The primal element of us ; of us, and of all things. I'he 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 mitUinl 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 music- ally ; the heart of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only reach it. 30 The Witcs Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of Nature, M-ems to hold a jioor rank among us, in comparison with > Jl' II-' Ir. - tC M- IPdiauming ^ li' II ITchaunt I j^ "^ MICROCOPY RESOIUTION TBST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 150 |Z8 14.0 21 2.2 1.8 ^ APPLIED \M/^CS 1653 East Main Street Rochester Ne, York 14609 USA (716; 482 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288-5989 -Fox /' 'If^, 96 LECTURES ON HEROES ,t ' !J * the Vates Prophet ; his function, and our esteem of him for his function, aliice slight. 'I'he Hero taken as Divinity ; the Hero taiien as Prophet ; then next the Hero taken only as Poet : does it not look as if our estimate of the (Ireat 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, beautiful verse-maker, man of genius, or suchlike'! — It looks so; lo 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 30 was.* I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man literally divine, it is that our notions of (iod, of the supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom and He'-'^ism, are ever rising higher; not altogether that our revt .-nee for these qualities, as manifested in our like, is getting o lower. This is worth taking thought of. Sceptical Dilet- tantism, the curse of these ages, a curse which will not last forever, does indeed in this the highest province of human things, as in all provinces, make sad work; and in cur reverence for great men, all crippled, blinded, paralytic as it is, comes out in poor plight, hardly recognisable. Men worship the shows '' of great men ; the most disbelieve that there is any reality of great men to worship. The drear- iest, fatalest* faith; believing which, one would literally despair of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, Napoleon ! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery ; that is : show ^ of him : yet is he not obeyed, worshipped after » H' H' H3 such like » H= H^ shews 2 no paragraph in W H= W * H^ fatallest 6 H^ H^ shew i », r TIN: nr.KO AS POET 97 his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world put together could not be? Hi-.h Duchesses,' and ostlers of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic, liurns ; -a strange feeling dwelling in each that they never heard a man like this; that, on •^ the whole, this ' is the man ! In the scc.vt heart of these people it still dimly reveals itself, thou-h there is no accredited way of uttering it at present, th'iit this rustic, with his black brows and Hashing sun-eves, and strange words moving laughter and tears, is of a dignitvfar beyond all others, incommensurable with all others. Do lo not we feel it so ? IJut now, were Dilettantism, Scepticism, Triviality, and all that sorrowful 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 thhv^s, so that a man acted on the impulse of that only, and counted the other non-extant; what a new livelier feeling towards this liurns were it ! Nay here in these ages, such as they are, have we not two mere Poets, if not deified, yet we may say beatified ? Shakspeare and Dante are Saints of Poetry; really, if we 20 will think of it, avionisc,/,' so that it is impiety to' meddle with them. The unguided instinct of the world, working across all these perverse inii;ediments. has arrived at such result. Dante and Shakspeare are a peculiar Two. 'I'liey dwell apart, in a kind of royal solitude ; none cHjual, none second to them: in the general feeling of the world, a certain transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfec- tion, invests these two. They cvr canonised," though no Pope or Cardinals took hand in doing it ! Sucn, in^'spite of '- ry perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, 30 » H' H» \V duchesses = H' IP that on 3 H' IP whole this * IP IP IP cast out ' IP H3 shews •■ IP IP Il'swepfou^ ■ IP IP H' ca>w,tizfd '" H' IP IP canonized ii| ^1 s!| I "J *' 98 LECTIKES ON llEKOES is still our indestructible reverence for heroism. We will look a little at these Two, the I'oet l),\nte and the I'oet Shakspeare : Avhat little it is permitted us to say here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange itself in that fashion. i \ Many volumes have been written by way of commentary 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, wandering, sorrowstricken man, not 10 much note was taken of him while he lived ; and the most of that has vanished, in the long space that now intervenes. It is fiv-j 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 Por- trait 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 most so. Lonely ' there, painted as on ^ va- cancy, with the simple laurel wound round it ; the death- 20 less sorrow and pain, the known victory which is also df^athless; — significant of the whole history of Dante! I think it is the mournfulest '" face th.it ever was painted from reality ; an altogether tragic, heart-affecting face. There is in it, as foundation of it, the softness, tenderness, gentle affection as of a child ; but all this is as if congealed into sharp contradiction, into abnegation, isolation, proud hope- less pain. A soft ethereal soul looking-out ^ so stern, im- placable, grim-trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick- ribbed ice ! Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful 3° one: the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the thing that is eating-oul his heart,* — as if it were withal ' li' IJlank -i \V i.ainted uii Mr IF IP looking out "' \\^ mournfullest 5 II' IP IP eating out K: A THE JIEKO AS POET 99 a mean insignificant 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 battle, against the world. Affection all converted into indig- nation: an implacable indignation; slov . equable,' silent,' like that of a god ! The eye too, it looks-out - as in a kind of 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 scng.' ,0 The little that we know of Dante's Life corresponds 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 in- considerable insight into certain provinces of things : and Dante, with his earnest intelligent nature, we need not doubt, learned better than most all that was learnable. He has a clear cultivated understanding, and of great subtlety ; this best fruit of education he had contrived to 20 realise « from these scholastics. He knows accurately and well what lies close to him ; but, in sucli a time, without printed books or free intercourse, he could not knov well what was distant : the small clear light, most luminous for what is near, breaks itself into singular chiaroscuro striking on what is far oil. This was Dante's learning from the schools. In life, he had gone through the usual destinies ; been twice out campaigning as a soldier for the Florentine State, been on e .ssy ; had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of talent and service, become one of the 30 Chief Magistrates of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice Portinari, a beautiful little girl of his own * 1 H' IPequable.itnplaLahl.-, silent ^ M' \\- W luoks out •' II' JP IPrcaluc i .11 i:i »*1J 100 HiCTUhKS OX hkkoes 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 wedd"d to another, and of her death soon after. She makes a gi ,:at 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 : 'o Dante himself was wedded ; but it seems not happily, far from happily. I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with '■ 's keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make happy. We will not complain of Dante's miseries: had all gone right Yith him as he wished it, he might have been Prior, PodestJl, or whatsoever they call it, of Florence, well ac- cepted among neighbours, — and the world had wanted one of the most notable words ever spoken or sung. Florence " would have had " another prosperous Lord Mayor; and the 20 ten dumb centuries continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centuries (for there will be ten of them and more) had no Divina Commcdia 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 cruci- fixion, 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-(ihibelline, Bianchi-Neri, or some other confused disturbances rose to such a height, 30 that Dante, whose party had seemed the stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly forth into banishment ; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe and wandering. His property was ail confiscated and more ; he had the fiercest » H' IP W grown up 22 H' H» Florence had THE UKKO AS POET 101 feeling that it was entirely unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He tried what was in him to get reinstated ; 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, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. Burnt alive ; so it stands, they say : a very curious civic document. Another curious document, some considerable number of years later, is a letter of Dante's to the Floren- tine Magistrates, written in answer to a milder proposal of lo theirs, that he should return on condition of apologising ' and paying a tine. He answers, with fixed stern pride: " If I cannot return without calling myself guilty, I will never x H' W W apologizing 2 H' JP strange now * " H' IP siiould do so much to amuse us, * * II' it is not strange, if you think of the I'roverb, H" it is not strange ; you are to recollect the Proverb, i 1 i ji' : I 102 LECTURES ON HEROES W r; Li/:e to //^t- ," — 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 'o 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 Purgatory and Heaven thou shalt surely see! What is Florence, Can della Scala, and the World and Life altogether? Eternitv: thither, of a truth, not elsewhither, art thou and all things bound ! The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its 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 bodi- 20 less, it is the one fact important for all men : — but to Dante, in that age, it was bodied in fixed certainty of scientific shape ; he no more doubted of that Malcbolge Pool, that it all lay there with its gloomy circles, with its alii guai, 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, bursts 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 solaceuient 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 ^ H» H' IP resting place 2 no paragraph ,« 11' IF H^ 30 /'///; HERO AS roET 103 l>clp h.m m doing it. He knew too, partly, that ,t was great; the greatest a man could do. Mf thou follow thy star, S. tu segui tua stc/u,: so could the Hero, in his orsakenness, in his e.xtren.e need, still say to himself: hollow thou thy star, thou sh.ilt not fail of a glorious haven !" The labour of writing, we find, and indeed could know otherwise, was great and painful for him • he says, I h.s liook, 'which has made me lean for many years ' Ah yes, ,t was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil, - not •n sport, hut in grim earnest. His IJook, as indeed most .o good Looks are, has been written, in n,any senses, with his heart s blood. It is his whole history, this liook. He died after f.n.shing it; not yet very old, at the age of fifty-six- -- broken-hearted rather, as is said. He lies buried in his' death-c.ty Ravenna: Hie ch.oior Dantcs p,Unis e.torris ah ons. I he Florentines begged back his body, in a century alter ; 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 1 a mystic unfathomable .Song; ' and such is literally the ^c chanacter of it. Col- -marks very pertinently some- where, that wherever : a sentence nmsically worded, of true rhythm and n, . .he words, there is something deep and good in th. .ning too. For body and souK word and .dea. go strangely together here as everywhere. Song: we said before, it was the Heroic of Speech! All -'/'/loems, Homer's and the rest, are authenticallv .Songs. I would say, in strictness, that all right Poems a're ; tlmt whatsoever is not su., is properly no Poem, but a piece of rose cra,nped into jingling lines, to the great injury of 30 the grammar, to the great grief of the reader, for most part ' V^hat we want to get at is the t/n>u./,f the man h.ad, if he '"'''«'*^^" ^'H' IP IP shut out 'a. ' 1*^1 it Uk.J ..i ir m UH /./•CTCk'hs ox ///:h'o/:s hiu had any : why should he twist it into jinjj;le, if he foulii 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 ('oieridj;e\ remark, become nmsical by the greatness, depth and music of his Uioiijjhts, tiiat we can give him right to rhyme and sing ; that we call him a Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of S|)eakers, — whose s|)eech is Song. Pretenders to this are many ; and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part a very melanciioly, not 10 to say an insujjportable business, that of reading rhyme ! Rhyme that had no inward necessity to be rhymed ; — it ought to have told us plainly, without any jingle, what it was aiming at. I would advise all men who uin speak their thought, not to sing it ; to undei-stand 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 something divine, so shall we hate the false .song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a thing hollow, superfluous, altogetlier an insincere and offensive 20 thing. v> I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his Divhw Comciiy that it is, in all .senses, genuinely a Song. In the very sound of it there is ^ i\nito J'cnito ; it proceeds as by a chant.' The language, his simple tcrza ritna, doubtless helped him in this. One reads along naturally with a sort of li/t. But I add, that it could not be otherwise ; for the essence and material of the work are them.selves rhythmic. Its depth, and rapt passion and sincerity, makes it musical ; — go tk, *• enough, there is music everywhere. A true inward 30 symmetry, what one ca'.s an architectural harmony, reigns in it, proportionates it all : architectural ; which also par takes of the character of music. The three kingdoms, InfermK Pttrgaforio^ Piinidiso, look-out -' on one another like 1 H" 11^ W chaunt - IP H» IP look out IHI: llh.KO AS j'o/:r 105 compartments of a yrcal Ldificf; .1 ;,'rf,it su|X!rnatural world-cathedral, |)ilcd-u|)' there, stern, solemn, awful; Dante's World of Souls! It is, at bottom, the sman-if o( all Poems ; sincerity, here too, we find to be the measure of worth. It came deep out of the author's 'uMrt of hearts ; and it goes deep, and through long generations, into ours. The people of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, used 10 say, " /;,vv>r / /' //,//// ,//' /■ s/,i/.> „//' liifttno, See, there is the man that was in Hell!" Ah yes, he had been in Hell ; — in Hell enough, in long severe sorrow and struggle; 10 as the like of him is pretty sure to have been. Comme- dias that comeout ' -//,/>/<• are not accomplished otherwise, rhought, true labour of any kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of I'ain ? Horn as out of the black whirl- wind ;— true effort, in f.ict, as of a captive struggling to free himself: that is Thought. In all ways we are 'to l)ecome perfect through suffam^r,' _. jjut^ ^^ j ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^^ known to me is so elaborated ;'s this of Dante's. It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. It had made him 'lean' for maiy years. Not the general ao whole only ; every compartment of it is worked-out, with intense earnestness, into truth, int) clear visuality. Each answe. . to the other; each fits s place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and polished. 1 1 is the soul of Dante, and in this the soul of the middle ages, rendered forever rhythmically visible there. No light task ; a right intense one. but a task which is (/o/tc Perhaps one would say, intnisity, 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 30 mind ; rather as a narrow, and even sc arian mind : it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all sen js, concen- ' H' \V \V piled up -i H' n» HHome out l\\ \ i f{ 106 LEcrv/a-a on f/AA'u/-:s i^: \t 1 I ! it ti tered 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, ('onsider, 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 tyjie of a thing ; presents that and nothing more. You remember that first view he gets of the Hall of Dite : rei/ pinnacle, redhot cone of iron 10 glowing through the dim immensity of gloom;- so vivid, so distinct, visible at once and forever ! It i -. as an emblem of the whole genius of Dante. I'here is a brevity, an abrupt precision in him: Tacitus is not briefer, more condensed; and then in Dante it seems a natural condensation, spon- taneous 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 sha.p decisive grace he snatches the true likeness of a matter : cuts into the matter as with a pen of fire. Plutus, the blustering giant, so collapses at Virgil's rebuke; it is 'as the sails sink, the mast being suddenly broken.' Or that poor Brunetto Latini,' A'ith the C0//() aspettOy 'face bakeii^' 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 Kternity. And how Farinata rises ; and how Cavalcante falls — at hearing of his Son v' the past tense 30 '///^ ' ! I The very movements in Dante have something brief ; swift, decisive, almost military. Lt is of the inmost essence of his genius this sort of painting. The fiery, swift Italian nature of the man, so silent, passionate, with its • IP W IP Sordello THE ///:ko .is poet 107 quick abrupt movements, it, nilent 'pale rages/ Hi^^ak, Itself 'T these things. For though this of painting is one of the outermost deyelopments of a man. it comes like all else from the essen- t.al acuity of hi:n ; it is physiognomical of the whole man J.nd a man whose words paint you a likeness, you have found a man worth something; mark his manner of doing .t. as very characteristic of him. In the hrst place, he could not have discerned the object at all. or seen the vital wi^' ir '''H""^" '' u"'' "'^'^ "''* "'•'>• ^■^^"' W''/>'"--/' 'o witli a, - had sympathy in him to hcMow on objects Me must have been sina;. about it too; sir. re and syn.p.^. thet.c: a man without worth cannot give you the likeness of any object ; he dwells in vague outwardness, fallacy and tr.v.al hearsay, about all objects. .And indeed may we not say that intellect altogether expresses itself in this power of discerning what an object is? Whatscx^ver of faculty . 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 sur- .o plusage: It is his faculty too. the man o{ businesses facult, that he discern the true l.keness, not the false superficial' one, of the thing h . has got to work in. And how much of morahty ,s in the kind of insight wc get of anythin-- -the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it, the '-c.ltv of seeing'! To the mean eye all things are triv..".. I certainly as to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael the Painters tell us. is the best of all I'ortrait-painters withal.' Xo most gifted eye can e.xhaust the significance of any "p T" , n'^"' co'n'Tionest human face there lies more than 30 Raphael will take-away - with him. Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, and of a vividness as of tire in dark night ; taken on the wider scale. » H' H» H' sympathized s w ,p 1,3 ^^^^ ^^^^ h- '• > 'II. hi 108 LECTURES OX HEROES it is everyway noble, and the outcome 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 infinite wail speaks there, into our very heart of hearts. A touch of womanhood in it too : della ' bella pcrsonn, (he mi fit tolta ' ; and how, even in the Pit of woe, it is a solace that he'- will'' never part from her'! Saddest tragedy in these aiti i;uai. And the racking winds, in that acr Itnino, whirl them away again,* to wail forever* ! 10 — Strange to think : Dante was the friend of his poor Fran cesca's father ; Francesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a bright innocent little child. Infinite pity, yet also infinite rigour of law : il 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 can- 20 not pity either. His verv pity will be cowardly, egoistic, — sentimentality, or little better. I know not in the world an affection equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trembling, longing, pitying love : like the wail of .^^^olean 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 . aradiso ; his gazing in her pure transfigured eyes, her that had been puri- fied by death so long, separated from him so far: — one" 1 1 I P she speaks of ' qtiesta formu ' ; — so innocent 2 H' he 3 3 H* ' will never part from her ' * * IP again, forever 6 H' li- 11^ avenged upon 6 H' IP far : ah. THE HE KG AS I'OET 109 likens it to the song of angels ; it is among the purest utter- ances of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came out of a human soul. For the iuteiisc Dante is intense in all things ; he has got into the essence of all. His intellectual insight as paintLr, on occasion too as reasoner, is but the result of all other sorts of intensity. Morally great, above all, we must call him ; it is the beginning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent as his love; -as indeed, what are they but the imcrse or converse of his love .> •./ Dio spincaiti cJ a ic m-mici siii, Hateful to (lod and to the enemies of Clod : ' lofty scorn, unappeasable silent reprobation and aversion ; 'Noil ragionam di lor. We will not speak of tfirm, look only and pass.' Or think of this; -They have not the //,;/.• to die, iXon han sprranza di wort,:' One day, it had risen sternly benign on the scathed heart of l')ante, 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 20 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 /n/rr„o to the two other parts of the Divine Commedia. .Such preference belongs, I imagine, to our general Kyronism of taste, and is like to be a transient feel- ing. 'I'he Puri^'.iforio and /',tntdiso. especially tli- former, one would almost say, is even more excellent than it. It is a noble thing that Purj-atorio. 'Mountain of Purifica- tion;' an emblem of the noblest conception of that age. 30 If Sin is so fatal, and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awful, yet in Repentance too is man punt pent an ce is the grand Christian act. ft is beautiful how Dante works it out. The tremohir dclP ondc, that 'tremblin-r' of .. O '\i .H 110 LECTURES OAT HEROES the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morning, dawning afar on the wandering Two, is as the type of an altered mood. Hope has now dawned; never-dying Hope, if in company still with heavy sorrow. The obscure sojourn of damons and reprobate is underfoot ' ; a soft breathing of penitence mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy itself. " I'ray for me," the denizens of that Mount of Pain all say to him. "Tell my Giovanna to pray for me," my daughter Giovanna; "I think her 10 mother loves me no more!" They toil painfully up by that winding steep, ' bent-down - like corbels of a building,' some of them, — orushed-together '^ so ' for the sin of pride ; ' yet nevertheless in years, in ages and *ons, they shall have reached the top,* which is Heaven's * gate, and by Mercy ^ shall have been '" admitted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed ; the whole Mountain shakes with joy, "nd a psalm of praise rises, when one soul has perfected repentance and got its sin and misery left behind ! I call all this a noble embodiment of a true noble thought. 20 But indeed the Three compartments mutually support one another, are indispensable to one another. The Para- diso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is the redeeming side of the Iiifcnio : the Inferno without it were untrue. All three make-up" the true Unseen World, as figured in the Christianity of the Middle Ages ; a thing forever memorable, forever true in the essence of it, to all men. It was perhaps delineated in no human soul with such depth of veracity as in this of Dante's ; a man sent to sing it, to keep it long memorable. Very notable with what 3° brief simplicity he passes out of the every-day reality, into the Invisible one ; and in the second or third stanza, we 1 II'HMP underfoot « H'HMIMjent down 8 II' H»H* crushed together «•• II' IF top, Heaven's 5 6 H'H^ Mercy been « H' II» IP make up THE HERO AS POET HI find ourselves in the World of Spirits ; and dwell there, as among things palpable, indubitable ! Jo Dante they v>ere so ; the real world, as it is called, and its facts, was but the threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of a World. At bot- tom, the one was as //-^Arnatural as the other. Has not each man a soul .' He will not only be a spirit, but is one. I o the earnest Dante it is all one visible Fact ; he believes it, sees it ; is the Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, \ say again, is the saving merit, now as always. Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a symbol withal, .c an emblematic representation of his Belief about this Universe:— some Critic in a future age, like those Scan- dmavian ones the other day, who has ceased altogether to think as Dante did, may find this too all an 'Allegory,' perhaps an idle Allegory! It is a sublime embodiment, or ' sublimest, of the soul of ( hristianity. It expresses, as in huge worldwide-^ architectural emblems, how the Chris- tian Dante felt (iood and Fvil to be the two polar elements of this Creation, on which it all turns; that these two differ not hy p,rj\rahility ol one to the other, but by incom- 20 patibility absolute and infinite ; that the one is excellent and high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black is (iehenna and the Pit of Hell ! Kverlasting Justice, yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity, -all Christianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is emblemed here. Kmblemed : and yet, as I urged the other day, with what entire truth of purpose ; how uncc nscious of any emblem- ing ! Hell, Purgatory, Paradise: these things were not fashioned as emblems ; was there, in our Modern Furopean Mind, any thought at all of their being emblems! Were 30 they not indubitable awful facts ; the whole heart of man taking them for practically true, all Nature everywhere confirming them ? So is it always in these things.' Men ^ H' H' our 2 H' H» H' world-wide kit ; ■» 'Mi f* 4 'VI rr , Mi I 112 LECTURES ON HEROES I do not believe an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his new thought may he, 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 expres- sion of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man towards the Universe ; veracious, true once, and still not without worth for us. But mark here the difference of Paganism and Christianism ; one great difference. Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature ; the destinies, efforts, lo combinations, vicissitudes of things and men in this world ; Christianism emblemed the Law of Human Duty, the Moral Law of Man. One was for the sensuous nature: a rude helpless utterance of the first Thought of men, — the chief recognised virtue. Courage, Superiority to Fear. The other was not for the sensuous nature, but for the moral. What a progress is here, if in that one respect only ! — L ' I \ 111 And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centu- ries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The Dirtna Cum media is of Dante's writing ; yet in truth // belongs to ten 20 Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods, — how little of all he does is properly his work ! All past invent- ive men work there with him; — as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here, in everlasting music. These sublime ideas of his, terrible and beautiful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all the good men who had gone before him. Precious they ; but also is not he 30 precious ? Much, had not he spoken, would have been dumb ; not dead, yet living voiceless. On the whole, is it not an utterance, this mystic Song, at 1 H'H'H'got up ivr^^ TI/E HRK'O AS /'()/■:/■ 11? once of one of the greatest human souis, and of the highest thing that Kurope had hitherto reahsed for itself > ( hris t.anism. as Dante sinfjs it, is another than Paganism in th- rude Norse n,ind ; another than « liasiard Chris.ianism ' half-art.culately spoken in the Arab Desert seven-htmdred ' years before .'-The noblest /V-vMnade .>„/ hitherto amon.. men is sung, and emblemed-forth ^' a!,i,linglv, bv one of the noblest men. In the one sense and in the o'ther, are we not right glad to possess it? As 1 calculate, it mav last yet for long thousands of years. For the thing that is ,o uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul, dilTers alto- gether from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer IS of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer pisses away, ,n swift endless changes -. the inmost is the same ves- terday, today and forever. True souls, in all generati;,ns of the world, who look on this Dante, will ,i„d a brother- hood .n him; the deep sincerity of his thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise to their sinceritv ; thev will fee that this Dante too was a brother. Napolc-on in Saint- Helena ,s charmed with the genial veracity of old Homer. .0 The oldest Hebrew Prophet, un* •■'■ /•///; IIKKO AS roKi' 117 does cooperate • with all ; not a leaf rotting on the high- way but is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems; no thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, ar.u works sooner or later, recognisably or irrecogni- sably, on all men ! It is all a Tree : circulation of sap and mfluences, mutual communication of every minutest leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. The Iree Igdrasil, that has its roots dcwn in the Kingdoms of }lela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven !— lo In some sense it may be said that this glorious Kliza- bethan Kra with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and Hower- age of all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the ("atholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this Practical Life which Shakspeare was to sing. For Religion then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice • the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before .Shaks- 20 peare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. He did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary, sent him forth ; taking small thought of Acts of Parlia- ment. King-Henrys,-' Queen-Flizal)eths' go their way; and Nature too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the' whole, are small, notwithstanding the noise thev make. What Act of Parliament, debate at St. Stephen's,' on the hustings or elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into bei:.g.> No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening jc subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jan- gling and true or false endeavoring ! This Elizabethan Era, H' H» IF cooperate H' Queen Elizabeth II' King Henrys ' >i| I us LECTURES OX HEROES and all its nobleness and blessedness, came without proc- lamation, preparation of ours. Priceless Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature ; given altogether silently ; — re- ceived 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 .Shakspe- e of ours, perhaps the opinion one some- times hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one ; I think the best judgment not of this country «o only, but of Kurope at large, is slowly pointing to the con- clusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all I'oets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision,' such a faculty ' of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. .Such a calmness of depth ; placid joyous strength ; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea ! It has been said, that in the constructing of Shakspeare's Dramas there is, apart ao from all other 'faculties' as they are called, an understand- ing manifested, equal t, that in Bacon's Novum Or);ivium. That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It would become xixkag apparent if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shakspeare's dramatic materials, r./ could fashion such a result ! The built house seems all sd fit, —everyway - as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and the nature of things,'— we forget the nuic disorderly quarry it was shaped from. The very perfec- tion of the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides 30 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 » » H' W vision, faculty 3 H« H' things ; 2 H' H* fit, every way H* fit, — every-way THE ttEkO AS POET materials are, what h them IS. It is not a transitory IS own force and its rcl 119 iition to suffice; it is deliberate ill glance of insight that will umination of the whole mattei "t .s a calmly seeing eye ; a great intellect, in short II „„^ , .. ' 0-- 'V.IILWI, III snori. tlow .1 man. of somew.de thing that he has witnessed, will cons tct a narru.ve. what kind of picture and delin atio " ect .s .n the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prominent; which unessential, tit to be suppresse lo hnd out this, you task the whole force of insight tint oThfd::h"of"h^ '""? '""''"'"' ''' ^'""«' --^i to the depth of h.s understanding, will the fitness of his answer be. Vou will try him so. Does like joi.. Use f t tha us embrodment becomes order? (a., the man say. wo df 'l' • f " '^" ''-^'^''^ *^"^^ -^ ^^ chaos make 'a world .> Precisely as there is A^/,/ in himsel.; will he accomplish this. trahUinrn' "h T' "' '''""' '^ " '" ^^'^•^^ ^ -"^'d Por- .o men. that Shakspeare .s ,vv<,/. All the greatness of 'the nan comes out decisively here. It is unexampled. I think that calm creative perspicacity of Shakspeare. The thin.: he looks at reveals not this or that face of it. but its inmost htart. and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light ^ fore h.m. so that he discerns the perfect structure of i, ^ reat.ve. we said .- poetic creation, what is this too but 7CV ?u^ ^efficiently ? The r.w,/ that will describe he thmg. follows of itself from such clear intense sight of jo the thing. And is not Shakspeare's ».>r,r//n, his valour IZtTu '°!f ''"''• ^^"^hfulness: his whole victorious =>trength and greatness, which can triumph over such • •>• ' I 120 i./:cruA'Ks oa; ///-lA'O/is obstructions, visible tht-re too ? (Ireat as the world! No fu'ts/,/, [Mjor convex-conc.ive mirror, reflecting; all objects with its own convexities and concavities; a jxjrfectly /nr/ mirror; - -that is to »ay withal, if we will understand it, a man justly related to all thin^^s and men, a ^(X)d man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how this ■;reat soul take»-in ' all kinds of men and objects, a Kalstalf, an OthelK-, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth to us in their round com- pleteness; lovin;^, just the equal brother of all. Airv/w 10 Orj^tinHm, and all the intellect you will tind in Hacon, is of a quite secondary order ; earthy, material, poor in com- parison with this. Amonj; modern men, one finds, in strictness, almos.. nothinj; of the same rank, (loethe alone, since the days of Shaksjieare, reminds me of it. Of him too you say that he sdjo the object ; you may say what he himself says of Shakspeare : 'His characters are like- watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal; they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechanism als(» is a'l visible.' 20 The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things ; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrappcd-up" in these often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that some thing were discernible. .\re they base, miserable things.' \ ou can laugh over lliein, you can weep over them ; you can in some way or otlier genially relate yourself to them; ■ — ^you can, i. t lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from thcin, till the hour comt for practically exterminating and extinguishing them '. 30 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; cr failing that, perhaps sti" better, ^ Fret in act. Whether he write at all ; and it so, whether in » II' IP IP takes in ^ II' 11= IP wrapped up h //// ///■/•() I'rc.scor in vtrso, will t|ir|H.nn accidt-nts: who knows on hul . .in • *' '"'''^'' "''■""'^•"'^' - I'^^'-h'PH on hU having ..ul a H nKm^-mastcr. on his l,c-in« ,,.„;,ht to .in« in his .oyhoo.II ,u.t the faculty which .nahlcs hin, to'lisccrn e .nncr heart of thin,., and the harmony that dwells .ere for whatsoc-ver exists has a har.nony in the heart of • ';;;t -»"<' -'t hoUl together and exi.t,. is not the result of hah.ts or accidents, hut the ,nft of Nature herself ; the prunary outht for a Heroic M..n in what .ort .soever. To the I oet as to every other, we say (irst of all. S.-.-. If you c.nnot do that, it is of no use .o keep strin.in, rhv me" oursclt a I'oet; there .s no hope f<.r you. If you can. .ere .s. .n prose or verse, in action or speculation, al ..nner of hope. The crabbed old .Schoohnaster usJd to ask w.,en they breu^du hi.n a new pupil. " lu.t are ye sure he s „,, „ „ .,,,.. ,vhy, really one n,i,ht ask the same h.n«. m regard to every nun proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: .Are }e sure he s not a dunce' Thero is. in this world, no . 'Jther entirely fatal person. J'or, in fact, I say the dejjree of vision that dwells in a nun .s a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeares faculty. I should say superiority of Intellect and think I l,ad included all under that. What indeed arc' faculties > We talkof facultx-s as if they were distinct, thing separable ; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, . 1 '-"1 ! 124 LECTURES OX HEROES Nature's hijjhest reward to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a />ivt of herself . Such a man's works, whatso- ever he witli tmost conscious exertion and forethought shall accomj ,h, grow up withal ////consciously, from the unknown deeps in him; as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape them- selves; with a symmetry grounded on Nature's own laws, conformable to all Truth whatsoever. How much in Shaks- peare lies hid ; his sorrows, his silent struggles known to 10 himself; much that was not known at all, not speakable at all : like roots, like sap and forces working underground '. Speech is great ; but Silence is greater. Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable, i will not blame Dante for his misery : it is as battle without victory; but true battle, --the tirst, indispensable thini;. Vet I call Shakspeare greater than Dante, in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own sorrows : those Sonn./s of his wiJl even testify expresslv in what deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for -o his life; — -as what man like him ever failed' to have' to do ? It seems to me a heedless notion, our common one that he sat like a bird on the bou ,1 ; and sang forth, free and offhand,^ never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so ; with no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in '' with sorrows by the way ? Or, still better, hov, could a man delineate a Hamlet, a ("oriolanus, a Macbeth. so many suffering heroic heart.s, if his own heroic heart h;i(l never suffered ? .\nd now, in contrast with all this, observe 30 his mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter! You would say, in no point does he exaggerate but only in laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn. 1 1 H'UMiadnot •^ H3 off hand 3H' IF HJ fall in THE HERO AS POET J25 are to be found in Shakspeare ; yet he is always in measure here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially 'good hater.' But his laughter seems to pour from him in floods ; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on the butt ' he is bantering, tumbles' and tosses him in all sorts of horse-play; you would say, with- his whole hfjart - laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. Xo man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only .0 di'siriiDi^o laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so, Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot.' Kven at stupidity and pretension this Shakspeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and \erges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laugh- ing ; and hope they will get on well there, and continue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sun- shine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. 20 M. ,>< ■, 't • We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individual works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be said 'on that head. Had we, for instance, all his plays'' reviewed as Hamht, in Willirhn Mrist.r, is ! A thing which might, one day, be done. August Wilhelni Sclilegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, Hrnry /v///- and tlie others, which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew no English History but what he had learned from Shaks- peare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable 3c Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized ; ' ' 11' W butt. tuml.l.,< - - IP IP IP ruar^ ..lul » II' 11= IP Flays !> . 126 LECTURES ON HEROES t! ( all rounds itself ofiF, into a kind of rhythmic coherence ; it is, as Schlegel says, e/>ic; — as indeed all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing. That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shaks- peare'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 lo good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England ! " There is a noble Patriotism in it, — far other than the ' indiffer- -e ' 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 20 which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. All his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping circumstances ; giving only here and there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages there are that come upon you like splendour out of Heaven ; bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing : you say, " That is true, spoken once and forever ; whereso- ever 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, 30 in part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakspeare had tu 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. No man works save under conditions. The sculptor cannot set his own free THE HERO AS POET Ml 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 rroplut, 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; ««speakable, deep as Topht-t, high as Heaven : ' We are such stuff as Dreams are made of!' That scroll in West- lo minster Abbey, which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any seer. Hut the man sang ; did not preach, except usically. We called Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism. May we not call Shakspeare the still more melodious Priest of a tnte Catholicism, the ' Uni- versal Church ' of the Future and of all times .' No narrow superstition, harsh asceticism, fanatical fierceness or perver- sion : a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousand- fold hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which let all men worship as they can! We may say 20 without offence, that there rises x kind of universal Ps.ilni out of this Shakspeare too ; not until to make itself heard among the still more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we understood them, but in harmony ' ! I cannot call this Shakspeare a -Sceptic,- as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No : neither unpatriotic, ihoagh he says little about his Patriotism ; nor - sceptic, though he'says little about his Faith. Such ' indifference ' was the fruit of his greatness withal : his whole heart was in his own grand .30 sphere of worship (we may call it such ) ; these other contro- versies, vitally important to other men, were noi vital to hitn. 1 II' H- H^ unison -^ \\\ no ! '. .-••J —'it • i il.1 tiM 128 LECTURES ON IIEKOES \ \ :i 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 P^arth. Is he not an eye to us all ; a blessed heaven-sent Bringer of Li<,'ht ?— And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that this Shakspeare, everyway ' an unconscious man, was conscious of no Heavenly message ? He did not feel, li kc Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours, 10 that he specially was the ' Prophet of dod:' and- was he not greater than Mahomet in that ? C.reater ; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more success- ful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme Prophethood ; and has come down to us inextricably involved in error to this day ; dragging along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say, as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and simula 20 crum ; no Speaker, but a Babbler I F.ven in Arabia, as 1 compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, this Dante may still be young; while this Shakspeare may still pretend to be a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for unlimited periods to come ! ' Compared with any speaker or singer one knows, even with .Eschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and universality, last like them ? He is sincere as they ; reaches deep down like them, to the universal and peren 30 nial. But as for Mahomet, f 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 trivial » H' IP 1[^ every way ■: H' IP I ask •^ no pa nigra/' /t in H' I|- W THE IIEKO AS POET 12V ity, —as indeed such ever is. I'he truly great in him too was the unconscious : that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-out ' with that great thunder-voice of his, not by words which he thought to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a history whicii wnr great ! His Koran has become a stujiid piece of prolix absurdity ; we do not believe, like him, that r'.od wrote that! The C.reat Man here too, as always, is a lorceof Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him springs-up- from the ///articulate deeps. Well : this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose 'o to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live with- out begging ; whom the Karl of .Southampton cast some kind glances on : whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him, was for sending to the I'readmill ! We did not account him a god, like Odin, while lie dwelt with us; on which point there were nuich to be said. Put i will say rather, or repeat : In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, consider what this Shakspeare has actuallv become among us. Which Knglishman we ever made, in this land of ours, which million of Knglishmen, would wc not give- 20 up' rather than the Stratford Peasant.' There is no regi- ment of highest Dignitaries that we would sell iiini for. He is the grandest thing we have yet done. Kor our honour among foreign nations, as an ornament to our Knglish Household, what item is tliere that we would not surrender rather than him.' V -.sider now. if they asked us, Will you give-up^ your Indian Kmiiire or your Shak.s- peare, you Knglish ; never have had any Indian Kmpire, or never have had any Shaksjieare .' Really it were a grave question. ( )fficial persons would answer doubtless in offi- 30 cial language ; but we, for our part too. should not we be » H' IP H3 speak out ^ H' H- H^ springs uj) ■' H' il- ir' give up Ml' 11^ IP give up ■*i ,1 ■ ! ^ 130 LECTURES ON HEROES ii a :1 forced to answer: Indian Empire,' or no' Indian Kmpire ; we cannot do without Shakspeare ! Indian Kmpire will go,' at any rate, some day ; but this Shakspeare does not go,' he lasts forever with us; we cannot give-up* our Shaks- peare! Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful ' possession. England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a small fraction of the English : in America, in New Holland, •o east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxon- dom covering great spaces of the Cllobe. And now, what is it that can keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so that they do not fall-out* and fight, but live at peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another ? This is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem, the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments are here to accomplish : what is it that will accomplish this ? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part it. 20 Call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in it : Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance. Parlia- ment or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone ! This King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned sover- eignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying-signs ; ///destructible ; really more valuable in that point of view than any other means or appliance whatso- ever .? We can fancy him as radiant aloft 6ver all the Nations of Englishmen, a thousand years hence. From Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort 30 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 1 1 H' Empire, no 2 H' H» IP give up 3 H' H= H' tangibly useful * II' IP IP fall out nit: liEKO AS POET u\ are of one blood and kind with him." The most common- —"•'e politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that. iTes, tru'y. it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak- forth ' melodiously what the heart of it means! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all ; yet the noble Italy is actually one: Italy produced its Dante; Italy can speak! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong, with so many bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; ir and does a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth polit- ically together ; but he cannot yet speak. Something great in him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity while that Dante's voice is still audible. The Nation that has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Russia can be. — We must here end what we had to say of the Hero- Poet ^W II» IP speak forth Mi I ill I LECTURK IV THK IIKRo AS I'HIKSI. r.tilHKK; RKKORMATION : KNOX; I'lIRriANISM [Friday, i5tli May 1S40.] > Our present discourse is to be of the (Ire.it M H' IF \V ./aU ahcwe titU. '32 »'l 77//. HERO AS PKIEST 133 enhghtener of daily life. This, I s.iy, is the ideal of a Priest. So in old nines; s.. in these, and in ill times. One knows very well that, in n-l icin;; ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance is needful ; very K'rt-'at! Hut a Priest who Is not this at all, who «loes not any lon^'er aim or try to be this, is a character -of whom we had rather not s|H!ak in this place. Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, and did faithfully perform that function in its common sense. Yet it will suit us better here to consider them chiefly in .^ their historical character, rather as Reformers t'.. n Priests. There have been other Priests perliaps equally notable, in cilmer times, for doinj,' faithfully the oOice of a Leader of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kintl. .1 light from Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under Ood's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. Hut when this same n'nv was a rough one. of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through that. I)eco,„es, especially to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than 20 any other. He is the warfarin- and battling Priest ; who led his people, not to cpiiet faithful labour as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, in times all violent, dismembered : a more i)erilous service, and a more memo- rable one, be it higher or not. These two men we will account our best Priests, inasmuch as thev were our best Reformers. Nay I may ask. Is not every' true Reformer, by the nature of him, a l'ri,st first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Karth's visible force; knows that it, the invisible, is strong and alone strong. 30 He is a believer in the divine truth of things ; a .urr, seeing through the shows ' of things; a worshipper, in oneway or the other, of the divine truth of things ; a Priest, that is. 1 H» IP shews ill tfi 134 LECrUK/iS OA' ItEROKS i ^^H ! ail ^■t H' If he be not first a Priest, he wi" ^er be good for much as a Reformer. Thus then, as we have seen (>reat Men, in various situa- tions, building-up ' Religions, heroic Forms of human Exist- ence .n this world. Theories of Life worthy to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a Sh.ikspcare, — we are now to see the reverse process ; which also is necessary, which also may be c;i''ried-on * in the Heroic manner. Curious how this should be necessary : yet necessary it is. The 10 mild shining of the Poet's light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the Reformer : unfortunately the Reformer too is a personage that cannot fail in History ! The Poet indeed, with his mildness, what is he but the product and ultimate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its fierce- ness? No wild Saint Dominies and Thebaid ' Kremites, there had been no melodious Danta; rough Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from Odin to Walter Raleigh, from Ulfila to Cranmer, enabled Shakspeare to speak. Nay the finished Poet, I remark sometimes, is a io symptom that his epoch itself has reached perfection and is finished ; that before long there will be a new epoch, new Reformers needed. Doubtless it were finer, could we go along always in the way of music ; be tamed and taught by our Poets, as the rude creatures were by their Orpheus of old. Or failing this rhythmic viiisical way, how good were it could we get so much as into the equable way ; I mean, if peaceable Priests, reforming from day to day, would always suffice us ! But it is not so ; even this latter has not yet been realised. 30 Alas, the battling Reformer too is, from time to time, a needful and inevitable phenomenon. Obstructions are never wanting : the very things that were once indispen- » 1I» II» W building up - M' WW carried on » H« H» Thebaid '^ I THR HERO AS PKIEST US sable furtherances become obstructiotiH ; and need to Iw shaken-oJt,' and left behinu us -a businesH often of enor- tnouH difficulty. It is notable enough, surely, how a Thee rem or spiritual Representation, so we may call it. which once took-in the whole Universe, and was completely satis- factory in all pan if it to the highly-tliscursive' acute intellect of Dante, one of the greatest in the world, had in the course bf another century become dubitable to com- mon intellects ; become deniable ; and is now, to every one of us. Hatly incredible, obsolete as Odin's Theorem! ro lo Dante, human Existence, and (lod's ways with men, were all well represented by those MahM^cs, J'lux.Uorios ; to Luther not well. How was this .» Why could not Dante's Catholicism continue; but Luther's Protestantism must needs follow > Alas, nothing will umtinuf. I do lot 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 20 can trace-out'' the inevitable ntcessity of it in the nature of things. Kvery man, as I have stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer : he learns with the mind given him what has been; but with the same mind he discovers farther, he invents and devises somewhat of his own. Absolutely without originality there is no man. No man whatever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grandfather believed : he enlarges somewhat, by fresh dis- covery, his view of the ITniverse. and consequently his Theorem of the Universe, — which is an /////////,■ Universe, 30 and can never be embraced wholly or finally by any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlargement : lie enlarges > H" H- IP shaken off J H' !F IP highly discursive 3 H' H» H' trace out w 136 LF.C TUNES ON IIKKO/.S r I i ., I i 4 li somewhat, I say : iiiids somewhat that was credible to his grandfather incredible to him, false to him, inconsistent with some new thing he has discovered or observed. It is the history of every man ; and in the history of Mankind we see it summed-up ' into great historical amounts, — revolutions, new epochs. Dante's Mountain of I'urgatory doe i //()/ stand 'in the ocean of the other Hemisphere,' when Coluinhus has once sailed thither ! Men find no such thing extant in the other l^Iemisphere. It is not there. 13 It must cease to be believed to be there. Sr with all beliefs whatsoever in this world,— all Systems of IJelief, and Systems of I'r.ictice that spring from these. If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Belief waxes uncertain, i'ractice too becomes unsound, and errors, injustices and miseries everywhere more and more prevail, we shall see material enough for revolution. At all turns, a man who will ,/(f faithfully, needs to believe firmly. If he have to ask at every turn the world's suffrage ; if he cannot dispense with the world's suffrage, and make his own suf- 23 frage serve, he is a poor eye-servant ; the work committed to him will be wmlone. F-very such man is a daily con tributor to the inevitable downfall.- Whatsoever work ho does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward look of it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to somebody or other. Offences accumulate till they become insupportable; and are then violently burst through, cleared off as by explo- sion. Dante's sublime Catholicism, incredible now in the- ory, and defaced still worse by faithless, doubting anddishon est practice, has to be torn asunder by a Luther ; Shaks 30 peare's noble Feudalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to end in a French P evolution. The accumulation of offences Is, as we say, too literally exploded, blasted 1 II' IP IP summed up a H« H» downfal l^tl THE HEKO AS PRfEST 137 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 opini .v., and arrange- ments merely ' the fact that they were i icertain, icmj .rary, subject to the law of death ! At bot* .ai, u is not io : all death, here too we find, is but of tl> b^dv, not of the essence or soul ; all destruction, by violent revo.ution or howsoever it be, is but new creation on a wider scale. Odinism was Valour; Christianism was Humility, a nobler lo kind of Valour. No thought that ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but loas 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 posses- sion for us all. And, on the other hand, what a melan- choly notion is that, which has to represent all men, in all countries and times except our own, as having spent their life in blind condemnable error, m^re lost Pagans, Scandi- navians, Mahometans, only that we might have the true ultimate knowledge ! All generations of men were lost and 20 wrong, only that this present little section of a generation might be saved and right. They all marched forward there, all generations since the beginning of the world, like the Russian soldiers into the ditch of Schweidnitz Fort, only to fill-up'' the ditch with their dead bodies, that we might march-over ' and take the place ! It is an incredible hypothesis. Such incredible hypothesis we have seen maintained with fierce emphasis ; and this or the other poor individual man, with his sect of individual men, marching as over the dead 30 bodies of all men, towards sure victory : but when he too, with his hypothesis and ultimate infallible credo, sank into 1 H* only •>■ \V If H' fill up • H' H» H^ march over ;i ..pj S-«J ■'■At ■:•: .:r ^11 il dL 138 LECTURES OX HEROES 1: the ditch, and became a dead body, what was to be said ? — Withal, it is an important fact in the nature of man, that he tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes upon it as such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or the other way ; but it must be in some wider, wiser way than this. Are not all true men that Hve, or that ever lived, sol- diers of the same army, enlisted, under Heaven's cap- taincy, to do battle against the same enemy, the empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why should we misknow one 10 another, fight not against the enemy but against ourselves, from mere difference of uniform? All uniforms shall be good, so they hold in them true valiant men. All fashions of arms, the Arab turban and swift scimetar, Thor's strong hammer smiting down Jofuiis, shall be welcome. Luther's battle-voice, Dante's march-melody, all genuine things are with us, not against us. We are all under one Captain, soldiers of the same host. — Let us now look a little at this Luther's fighting ; what kind of battle it was, and how he comported himself in it. Luther too was of our spiritual 20 Heroes ; a Prophet to his country and time. As introductory to the whole, a remark about Idolatry will perhaps be in place here. One of Mahomet's charac- teristics, which indeed belongs to all Prophets, is unlimited implacable zeal against Idolatry. It is the grand theme of Prophets: Idolatry, the worshipping of dead Idols as the Divinity, is a thing they cannot away-with,' but have to' denounce continually, and brand with inexpiable reproba- tion ; it is the chief of all the sins they see done under the sun. This is worth noting. We will not enter here into 30 the theological question about Idolatry. Idol is Eidolon, a thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of (lod ; and perhaus one may question whether any the most bc- 1 1 H' IP H' away with, but must THE HERO AS PRIEST 139 H , \ nighted mortal ever took it for nore 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 whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by eidola, or things seen ? Whether seen, ren- dered 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 dif- ference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead^; lo an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby ; thereby is worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Sym- bols, by Idols: -we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and the worst Idolatry is only more idr>iatrous. Where, then, lies the evil of it ? Some fatal evil must lie in it, or earnest prophetic men woulr* )t on all hands so 20 reprobate it. Why is Idolatry so h;. .'Prophets? It seems to me as if, in the worship of th ■ j^oor wooden sym- bols, 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. 'I'he rudest heathen that worshipped C'anopus, or the ("aabah Black-Stone,'^ he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that worshipped nothing at all ! Nay the ..'as a kind of last- ing merit in that poor act of his ; analogous to what is still 2,0 meritorious in Poets : recognition of a certain endless divine beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so merci- 1 H' IP Godhood •* H' Black-stone n 0- .... 2v. m ir'-'i 140 LECTURES ON HEROES lessly condemn him ? The poorest mortal worshipping his Fetish, while his heart is full of it, may be an object of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will ; but cannot surely be an object of hatred. Let his heart be honestly full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow mind illumi- nated thereby ; in one word, let him entirely bdirrc 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. 10 But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era of the Prophets, no man's mind is any 'onger honestly tilled with his Idol or Symbol. Before the I? Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it to I be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to doubt that it was little more, ("ondemnable Idolatry is insimerc Idolatry. Doubt has eaten-out' the heart of it : a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to an Ark of the tove- nant, which it half-feels now to have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest - sights. Souls are no longer 20 jilhd with their Fetish ; but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make themselves feel that they are filled. " Vou 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 moral 30 soul is paralysed " thereby, cast into fatal magnetic sleep ! Men are no longer sincere men. I do not wonder that the earnest man denounces this, brands it, prosecutes it with 1 11' 11- IP eaten out - FP balefuUest » W 11= paralyzed THE I'KNO AS PRIEST HI inextinguishable aversion. He and il, ail good and it, are at death-feud. iJlamable ' Idolatry is L\iiit, and even what one may call Sincere-Cant. Sincere-! ant : tliat 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-wa.x,' 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, lo in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality ; that he stand upon things, and not shows ' of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articu- lately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows"' of things, however reg- ular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism too is the work of a Prophet : the prophet-work of that sixteenth century, v The first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous ; preparatory afar 20 otT 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 tliat we call Hero-worshi]), and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious or social, for mankind. One often hears it said thai Protes- tantism introduced a new era, radically different from any the world had ever seen before: the era of ' private judgment,' as they call it. v By this revolt against the Pope, every man became his own Pope; and learnt, among other things, 30 that he must never trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero- t H' H- IJlameahlc ■> II' II- i)ut>-\v.ix « no paragraph in II' IP IP « IP I P >luvvs 5 IP IP IPsluws \v Mi kit f' f.r. Js - f T I. I'" m\ 142 LECTURES ON HEROES captain, any more ! Whereby, is not spiritual union, all hierarchy and subordination among men, henceforth an impossibility ? So we hear it said. - Now I need not deny that Protestantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereign- ties. Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that Eng- lish Puritanism, revolt against earthly sovereignties, was the second act of it ; that the enormous French Revo- lution itself was the third act, whereby all sovereignties earthly and spiritual were, as might seem, abolished or lo made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the grand root from which our whole subsequent European History branches out. For the spiritual will always body itself forth in the temporal history of men ; the spiritual is the begin- ning of the temporal. And now, sure enough, the cry is everywhere for Liberty and Equality, Independence and so forth; instead of Kings, Ballot-boxes and Electoral suf- frages : it seems made out that any Hero-sovereign, or loyal obedience of men to a man, in things temporal or things spiritual, has passed away forever from the world. I should 20 despair of the world altogether, if so. One of my deepest convictions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possible but an anarchy ; the hatefulest ' of things. But I find Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it have pro- duced, to be the beginning of new genuine sovereignty and order. I find it to be a revolt against /^//.f<' sovereigns ; the painful but indispensable first preparative for true sover- eigns getting place among us! This is worth explaining a little. y Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that this of ' private judgment ' is, at bottom, not a new thing in the world, but oni_, new at that epoch of the world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar in the Reformation ; it 1 IP hatefuUest THE //KA'O AS rh'/EST 143 was a return to Irutli and Reality in opposition to lalse- hood and Sen>l)lance, as all kinds of Improvement and •'enuine I'eaehing are and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we will consider it, must at all times have existed in the world. Dante iiad not put-out' his eyes, or tied shackles on himself; he was at home in that ( atholi- cism of his, a free-seeing soul in it, — if many a poor liogs- traten, I'etzel and Dr. Kck had now become slaves in il. Liberty of judgment ? No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of a man to believe lo or to disbelieve : it is his own indefeasible light, that judg- ment of his ; he will reign, and believe there, by the grace of (lod alone ! The sorriest sophistical IJellarmine, preach- in" si-rhtless faith and passive obedience, must first, by some kind of amridion, have abdicated his right to be con- vinced. His 'private judgment' indicated that, as the advisablest step he could take. The right of private judg- ment will subsist, in full force, wherever true men subsist. A true man lu-lir,\-s with his whole judgment, with all the illumination and discernment that is in him, and has always 20 so believed. A false man, only struggling to 'believe that he believes,' will naturally manage it in some other way. Protestantism said to this latter. Woe ! and to the former, Well done ! At bottom, it was no new saying ; it was a return to all old sayings that ever had been said, lie gen- uine, be 'sincere: that was, once more, the meaning of it. Mahomet believed with his whole mind; Odin with his whole mind, —he, and all true Followers of Odinism. They, by their private judgment, had ' judged '-- at?. And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of private 30 judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no means neces- sarily end in selfish independence, isolation - ; but rather ends necessarily in the opposite of that. It is not honest 1 W H' IP put out - H' H^ isolation, ■I 144 LECTURES ON HEROES i t i inquiry that makes anarchy ; but it is error, insincerity, half-belief and untruth that make • it. A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth. There is no communion pos- sible among men who believe only in hearsays. The heart of each is lying dead ; has no power of sympathy even with things, — or he would believe them and not hearsays. No sympathy even with things ; how much less with his fellow- men ! He cannot unite with men ; he is an anarchic man. lo Only in a world of sincere men is unity possible ; — and there, in the longrun,' it is as good as certain. For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather altogether lost sight of, in"* this controversy: That it is not necessary a man should himself have discov- ered iht truth he is to believe in, and* never so sincerely to believe in.* A Great Man, we said, was always sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man need not be great in order to be sincere ; that is not the necessity of Nature and all Time, but only of certain corrupt unfortunate 20 epochs of Time. A man can believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received from an- oth4er ; — and with boundless gratitude to that other ! The merit of originality is not novelty : it is sincerity. The believing man is the original man ; whatsoever he believes, he bdkves it for himself, not for another. Every son of Adam cafl become a sincere man, an original man, in this sense ; no nuy*-tal is doomed to he 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 30 great and fruitful ages : ev«ry worker, in all spheres, is .1 worker not on semblance but vn substance ; every work issues in a result the general sum -->f such work is great , 1 II' II' H^ makes * M' H» HMong-run =' W IPo.'. s • 1 •" . •ir 1 tr i . /' K ^^ % \i rt \ ■ • ^ U f t i 146 I.ECrUKES ON lltlKOh.S likely to last a long time, with sad enou;,'h umltroilrnc-nts for us all, we must welcome it. as the pen.ilty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are comin;,'. In all ways, it behovetl men to c|iiit simulacra and return to fact; cost what it might, that did behove to be done. With spurious I'opes, and Helievtrs ' having no private judgment, —quacks pretending to command over dupes, - what can you do? Misery and mischief only. Vou can not make an association out of insincere men ; you cannot lo build an edifice except by plummet and level, — at rit^ht- angles to one another ! In all this wild revolutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I see the blessedest result preparing i .[-. 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 ? .\ world all sincere, a believing world : the like has been ; the like will again be, — cannot he!;- i eing. That were the right sort of Worshippers for licjoes: never could the truly Better be so reverenced as where all were True and 20 Good ! — But we must hasten to Luther and his Life. Luther's bl.-thplace was Kisleben in Saxony ; he came into the world there on the loth of November 14H3. It was an accident that gave this honour to Kisleben. His parents, poor mine-labourers in a village of that region, named Mohra, had gone to the Kisleben Winter-Fair : in the tumult of this scene the Krau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was named Martin LirrnKK. Strange enough to reflect upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with 30 her husband to make her small merchandisings ; perhaps to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow hut or household : ^ H' believers 'Aii TIN: IIEKO AS PNIEST 147 in the whole world, that day, there w;is not .1 more entirely unimportant-looking pair of i)eople than this Miner and his Wifo. And yet what were all Kmperors, I'ojjes and Potentates, in comparison ? i'liere was born here, once more, a Mijjhty Man ; whose li};ht was to tlame as the bea- con 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 Hirth- hour, in a still meaner environment, Kighteen Hundred years ago, — of which it is fit that we say nothing, that 10 we think only in silence ; for what words are there ! The Age of Miracles past.' The .Age of Miracles is forever here ! - I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function in this Earth, and doubtless wisely ordered to that end by the Providence presiding over him and us and all things, that he was born poor, and brought-up ' poor, one of the poorest of men. He had to beg, as the scliool-children in those times did ; singing for alms and brt-ad, from door to door. Hardship, rigorous Necessity was the poor boy's compaii- 20 ion ; no man nor no thing would put-on a false face to flatter Martin Luther. Among thinj^s, not among the shows* of things, had he to grow. A hoy of rude figure, yet with weak health, with his large greedy soul, full of all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. Hut it was his task to get acquainted with rcalitits, and keep acquainted with them, at whatever cost : his task was to bring the whole world back to reality, for it had dwelt too long with semblance! A youth nursed-up'^ in wintry whirlwinds, in desolate darkness and difficulty, thai he may step-forth * at 3° last from his stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god : a Christian Odin, — a right Thor oncc more, with H !■:,■■■ :;5 • ■'I » H' H» W brought up !»H' IP shews •M!" n- IP nursed up Ml' H' IP step forth ii Il 148 LECTUKES ON ItEROES his thunder-hammer, to smite asunder ugly enough Jolum and (Mant-monsters ! I'erh.ips the turning incident of his life, we may fancy, was that death of his friend Alexis, »)y lightning, at tin- gate of Krfurt. Luther had struggled-up ' through boyhood, better and worse; displaying, in spite of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to learn : his father judginj; doubtless that he might promote himself in the world, set him upon the study of Law. This was the path to rise ; lo 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 Krfurt, when a thunderstorm came on ; the bolt struck Alexis, he fell dead at Luther's feet.^ What is this Life of ours ?•■'—- gone in a minute, burnt-up * like a scroll. into the blank Eternity ! What are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships, Kingships ? They lie shrunk together there ! The Earth has opened on them ; in a moment they are not, and Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart. ao determined to devote himself to (lod and (lod's servict alone. In spite of all dissuasions from his father and others, he became a Monk in the Augustine Convent at Erfurt. This was probably the first light-point in the history ot Luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering itself ; but, for the present, it was still as one light-point in an cle ment all of darkness. He says he was a pious monk, i.' bin ein fromnur Moiuh frnerscn ; faithfully, painfully strui; gling to work-out'' the truth of this high act of his; but it 30 was to little purpose. His misery had not lessened; ha rather, as it were, increased into infinitude. I'he drudgcr 1 H' IP W struggled up Ml' ours ; — ^H' Unhand MI' IP H^ burnt up ' 11' II- W work out THE llEkO AS I'klEST 149 ics he had to do, as novice in his ( onve nt, all sorts of slave-work, were not his grievance; the deep earnest soul of the man had fallen into all manner uf black scruples, dubitations ; he believed himself likely tu die soon, and far worse than die. One hears with a new interest for j)oor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the un- speakable misery ; fancied that he was doomed to eternal reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere nature of the man ? What was he, that he should be raised to Heaven ! He that had known only misery, and mean slavery : the lo news was too blessed to be credible. It could not become clear to him how, by fasts, vi>;ils, formalities and mass- work, a man's soul could be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness ; had to wander staggering as on the verge of bottomless Despair. It must have been a most blessed discovery, that of an old Latin Bible which he found in the Krfurt Library about this time. He had never seen the Hook before. It taught him another lesson than that of fasts and vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experience, was helpful. 20 Luther learned now that a man was saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace of (lod: a more credible hypothesis. He gradu.ally got himself founded, as on the rock, "^o wonder he should venerate the Bible, which had brought this blessed help to him. He prized it as the Word of the Highest must be prized by such a man. He determined to hold by that ; as through life and to death he firmly did. This, then, is his deliverance from darkness, his final triumph over darkness, what we call his conversion ; for 3° himself the most important of all epochs. That he should now grow daily in peace and clearness ; that, unfolding now the great talents and virtues implanted in him, he should rise to importance in his Convent, in his country, I , 5 ^>{l ISO LECTURES OiX JtEROES and be found more and more useful in all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was sent on missions by his Augustine Order, as a man of talent and fidelity fit to do their business well : the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich, named the Wise, a truly wise and just prince, had cast his eye on him as a valuable person ; made him Professor in his new University of Wittenberg. Preacher too at Witten- berg ; in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this L'lther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was gaining lo more and more esteem with all good men. It was in his twenty-seventh year that he first saw Rome ; being sent thither, as I said, on mission from his Convent. Pope Julius the Second, and what was going-on ' at Rome, must have filled the mind of Luther with amazement. He had come as to the Sacred City, throne of (Jod's High- priest on Karth ; and he found it — what we know ! Many thoughts it must have given the man ; many which we have no record of, wnich perhaps he did not himself know how to utter. This Rome, this scene of false priests, 20 clothed not in the beauty of holiness, but in far other ves- ture, \% 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 Cod's hand, not in his. It is curious to reflect what might have been the issue, 30 had Roman Popery happened to pass this Luther by ; to go on in its great wasteful orbit, and not come athwart his little path, and force him to assault it ! Conceivable enough that, in tuis case, he might have held his peace » H» H» H3 going on THK IIIIKO AS PKIKST 151 about the abuses of Rome ; left Providence, and (lod on high, to deal with them ! A modest quiet man ; not prompt he to attack irrevcently persons in authority- His clear task, as I say, was to do his own duty ; to walk wisely in this wor'd of confused wickedness, and save his own soul aiive. 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, resisted, came to ex- tremity ; was struck-at,* struck again, and so it came to wager of battle between them ! This is worth attending to lo in Luther's history. I'erhaps no man of so humble, peace- able a disposition ever tilled 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 beca..ie a notoriety. Notoriety : what would that do for him ? I'he goal of his march through this world was the Infinite Heaven; an indubitable goal for him: in a few years, he should either have attained that, or lost it for- ever ! We will say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrow- fulest * of theories, of its being some mean shopkeeper 20 grudge, of the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, that first kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the Protestant Reformation. We will say to the people who maintain it, if indeed any such exist now : Clet first into the sphere of thought by which it is so much as possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like Luther, otherwise than distractedly; we may then begin arguing with you. The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of trade, by Leo Tenth, — who merely wanted to raise a little money, and for the rest seems to have been a Pagan 3° rather than a Christian, so far as he was anything, arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandalous trade there. Luther's flock bought Indulgences; in the confes- 1 H' H" IP struck at « H' sorrowfullest %'•■ I 'It; t ?,!i. 1 tr. ?|i W' 'Lit'J 152 LECTURES ON HEROES sional of his Church, people pleaded to him that they had already got their sins pardoned. Luther, if he would not be found wanting at his own post, a false sluggard and coward at the very centre of the little space of ground that was his own and no other man's, had to step-forth ' against Indulgences, and declare aloud that they were a futility and sorrowful mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned by them. It was the beginning of the whole Reformation. We know how it went ; forward from this first public chal- 10 lenge of Tetzel, on the last day of October 1517, through remonstrance and argument ; — spreading ever wider, rising ever higher ; till it became unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. Luther's heart's-desire * was to have this grief and other griefs amended ; his thought was still far ' other than that of introducing' separation in the Church, or revolting against the Pope, Father of Christendom. — The elegant Pagan Pope cared little about this Monk and his doctrines ; wished, however, to have done with the noise of him : in a space of some three years, having tried 20 various softer methods, he thought good to end it by fire. He dooms the Monk's writings to be burnt by the hang- man, and his body to be sent bound to Rome, — probably for a similar purpose. It was the way they had ended with Huss, with Jerome, the century before. A short argument, fire. Poor Huss: he came to that Constance* Council, with all imaginable promises and safe-conducts ; an earnest, not rebellious kind of man : they laid him instantly in a stone dungeon * three-feet * wide, six-feet ® high, seven-feet ' long;' burnt the true voice* of him out* of this world; 30 choked it in smoke and fire. That was not well done I 1 H" H'' H' step forth 2 H' heart's desire • * H' H* far from introducing * H» Constant 6IP n» HMhreefeet »H' IP IP six feet 7 H" H» H» seven feet •«H' H* voice out THE HERO AS PRIEST 153 I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolting against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire-decree of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the bravest heart then living in this world. The bravest, if also one of the humblest, peaceablest ; it was now kindled. These words of mine, words of truth and soberness, aiming faithfully, as hunun inability would allow, to promote God's truth on Earth, and save men's souls, you, God's vicegerent on earth, answer them by the hangman and fire ? You will burn me and them, for answer to the God's-message they strove lo to bring you ? You are not God's vicegerent ; you are another's ' than his,* I think ! I take your Bull, as an emparchmented Lie, and burn //. You will do what you see good next : this is what I do. — It was on the loth - of December 1520, three years after the beginning of the business, that Luther, 'with a great concourse of people,' took this indignant step of burning the Pope's fire-decree 'at" the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.'" Wittenberg looked on ' with shoutings ; ' the whole world was looking on. The Pope should not have provoked that 'shout ' ! It was 20 the shout of the awakening of nations. The quiet German heart, modest, patient of much, had at length got more than it could bear. Formulism, Pagan Popeism,* and other Falsehood and corrupt Semblance had ruled long enough : and here once more was a man found who durst tell all men that God's-world stood not on semblances but on realities; that life was a truth, and not a lie ! At bottom, as was said above, we are to consider Luther as a Prophet Idol-breaker; a bringer-back* of men to reality. It is the function of great men and teachers. 30 Mahomet said. These idols of yours are wood ; you put 1 » H' another s W} another's * H' H= H' Popism 4 H' H» H' tenth s n« H» H* bringer back * * H' in the market place of Wittenberg ■\: % ji. itl ll 154 LECTURES ON HEROES 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 fact. God's Church is not a semblance. Heaven and Hell are not semblances. I stand on this, since you drive 10 me to it. Standing on this, I a poor German Monk am stronger than you all. I stand solitary, friendless,' but on ' God's Truth ; you with your tiaras, triple-hats, with your treasuries and armories, thunders spiritual and temporal, stand on the Devil's Lie, and are not so strong ! — The Diet of Worms, Luther's appearance there on the 17th of April 1 52 1, may be considered as the greatest scene in Modern European History ; the point, indeed, from which the whole subsequent history of civilisation ■* takes its rise. After multiplied negotiations, disputations, it had 20 come to this. The young Emperor Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany, Papal nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assembled there : Luther is to appear and answer for himself, whether he will recant or not. The world's pomp and power sits there on this hand : on that, stands-up ' for God's Truth, one man, the ^ poor miner Hans Luther's S .» Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him not to go ; he would not be advised. A large company of friends rode-out * to meet him, with still more earnest warnings; he answered, "Were there as many Devils in 1 1 H'H* friendless, one man, on 2 H' H» civilization SH' H=H^ stands up * ♦ H' Hans I^nther the poor miner's son s H" IP ir todeout THE HERO AS PRIEST 155 Worms as there are roof-tiles, I would on." The people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the Diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling oui to him, in solemn words, not to recant : " Whosoever denieth me before men ! " they cried to him, — as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a black spectral Night- mare and triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not : " Free us ; it rests with thee ; desert lo us not!'" Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, distinguished itself by its respectful, wise and honest tone ; submissive to whatsoever could lawfully claim submission, not submissive to any more than that. His writings, he said, were partly his own, partly derived from the Word of God. As to what was his own, human infirmity entered into it ; unguarded anger, blindness, many things doubtless which it were a blessing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to what stood on sound truth and the Word of God, 20 he could not recant it. How could he? "Confute me," he concluded, "by proofs of Scripture, or else by plain just arguments: I cannot recant otherwise. For it is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Here stand I ; I can do no other : God assist me ! " — It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, England and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work these two centuries ; French Revo- lution, Europe and its work everywhere at present: the germ of it all lay there : had Luther in that moment done 3° other, it had all been otherwise ! The European World was asking him : Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stagnant putrescence, loathsome accursed death ; or, with whatever 1 no paragraph in H» H* H' •J l\- 156 LECTURES ON HEROES paroxysm, to cast the falsehoods out of me, and be cured and live ? — Great wars, contentions and disunion followed out of this Reformation ; which last down to our day, and are yet far from ended. Great talk and crimination has been made about these. They are lamentable, undeniable ; but after all, what has Luther or his cause to do with them ? It seems strange reasoning to charge the Reformation with all this When Hercules turned thi purifying river into King 10 Augeas's stables, I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was considerable all around : but I think it was not Her- cules's blame ; it was some other's blame ! The Reforma- tion 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 accus- ing, the answer of the world is : Once for all, your Pope- hood has become untrue. No matter how good it was, how good you say it is, we cannot believe it ; the light of our whole mind, given us to walk-by ' from Heaven above, finds 20 it henceforth a thing unbelievable. We will not believe it, we will not try to believe it, — we dare not ! The thing is untrue; we were traitors against the Giver of all Truth, if we durst pretend to think it true. Away with it ; let what- soever 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 hini to protest, they are responsible. Luther did what every mar that God has made has not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to do : answered a Falsehood when it ques- 30 tioned him, Dost thou believe me ? — No ! — At what cost soever, without counting of costs, this thing behoved to be done. Union, organisation spiritual and material, a far 1 H' W W walk by THE HERO AS PRIEST 157 nobler than any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest days, I never doubt, is coming for the world ; sure to come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Simulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to stand when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have anything to do. Peace ? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, the noisome grave is peace- able. We hope for a living peace, not a dead one ! And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable blessings of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The Old was lo true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days it needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, to get itself reckoned true. It was good then ; nay there is in the soul of it a deathless good. The cry of ' No Popery ' is foolish enough in these days. The speculation that Popery is on the increase, building new chapels and so forth, may pass for one of the idlest ever started. Very curious: to count- up* a few Popish chapels, listen to a few I - jtestant logic- choppings, — to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still calls itself Protestant, and say : See, Protestantism is dead; 20 Popeism^is more alive than it, will be alive after it! — Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call themselves Protestant are dead ; but Protestantism has not died yet, that I hear of ! Protestantism, if we will look, has in these days pro- duced its Goethe, its Napoleon ; German Literatu.eand the French Revolution ; rather considerable signs of life ! Nay, at bottom, what else is alive hut Protestantism ? The life of most else that one meets is a galvanic one merely, — not a pleasant, not a lasting sort of life ! Popery can build new chapels ; welcome to do so, to 30 all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more than Paganism can, — whieh also still lingers in some countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with the ebbing of the ' H' H' H* count up 2 H' ir IP Popism ^ K % S \\ !■» : ii i 158 LECTURES ON HEROES sea: you look at the waves oscillating hither, thither on the beach ; for minutes you cannot tell how it is going , look in half an hour where it is, — look in half a century where your Popehood is ! Alas, would there were no greater danger to our Europe than the poor old Pope's revival ! Thor may as soon try to revive. — And withal this oscillation has a meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet ; nor ought it. We may say, the Old never dies till lo 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 cap- able of being leu 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 20 here for a purpose. Let it last as long as it can. — Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none of them began so long as he continued living. The controversy did not get to fighting so long as he was there. To me it is proof of his greatness in all senses, this fact. How seldom do we find a man that has stirred-up' some vast commotion, who does not himself perish, swept-away ^ in it ! Such is the usual course of revolutionists. Luther continued, in a good degree, sovereign of this greatest revolution ; all 30 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 1 Ix' \V H' stirred up II" H' IP swept away THE III: NO AS I'NlESr 159 kingly faculty: he must have the gift to discern at all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and to plant him- self courageously on that, as a strong true man, that other true men may rally round him there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise. Luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all sorts, of silence, of tolerance and moderation, among others, are very notable in these cir- cumstances. Tolerance, I say ; a very genuine kind of tolerance : he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not ; the unes- lo sential may go * very much as ' it will. A complaint comes to him that such and such a Reformed Preacher ' will not preach without a cassock.' Well, answers Luther, what harm will a cassock do the man ? ' Let him have a cassock to preach in ; let him have three cassocks if he find benefit in them ! ' His conduct in the matter of Karlstadt's wild image-breaking; of the Anabaptists ; of the Peasants' War, shows* a noble strength, very different from spasmodic violence. With sure prompt insight he discriminates what is what : a strong just man, he speaks-forth " what is the 20 wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther's Written Works * give similar testimony of him. The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us ; but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough ; Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest ; his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-*and-twenty (Quartos' of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. Hut in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble 3° faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, home- 1 1 H" W go as 3 H" H= IP speaks forth 2 H' H» W shews * H' H- written works 6 8 w} IJ2 four-andtwenty quartos m \m ill il: I-' i| i MO LECTURES ON HEROES liness, 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 Kpic Poem, not write one. I call him ? great Thinker; as indeed his greatness of heart already betokens that. Richter says of Luther's words, 'his words are half- 10 battles.' They may be called so. ' The essential quality of him was, that he could fight and conquer ; that he was a right piece of human Valour. No more valiant man, no mortal heart to be called braver, that one has record of, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose character is valour. His defiance of the • Devils' in Worms was not a mere boast, as the like might be if now spoken. It was a faith of Luther's that there were Devils, spiritual denizens of the Pit, continually besetting men. Many times, in his writings, this turns-up ; and a most small sneer has been 20 grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg where he sat translating the Bible, they still show ^ you a black spot on the wall ; the strange memorial of one of these conflicts. Luther sat translating one of the Psalms ; he was worn-down ' with long labour, with sickness, absti- nence from food ; there rose before him some hideous inde- finable Image, which he took for the Evil One, to forbid his work: Luther started-up* with fiend-defiance; flung his inkstand at the spectre, and it disappeared ' The spot still remains there ; a curious monument of se /eral things. 30 Any apothecary's apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of this apparition, in a sc ntilic sense: but the man's heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell » H' W H» flashes out 2 H' H» H^ shew « \V W W worn down MI" IP IP started up THE HKKO AS F HI EST \u\ itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The thing he will quail before exists not on this Karth or under it. — Fearless enough I 'The ' Devil is aware,' writes he on one occasion, 'that this does not proceed out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumerable Devils. Duke George,' of Leipzig, a great enemy of his, ' Duke George is not equal to one Devil,' — far short of a Devil! • If I had business at Leipzig, I would ride into Leipzig, though it rained Duke-Georges for nine days running.' What a reservoir of Dukes to ride into M — to At the same time, they err greatly who imagine that this man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse disobedient obsti- nacy 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 md love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The tiger ao before a stronger foe — flies : the tiger is not what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few things more couching than those soft breathings of affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this great wild heart of Luther. So honest, unadulterated with any cant ; homely, rude in their utterance; pure as water welling from the rock. What, in fact, was all that downpressed mood of despair and reprobation, which we saw in his youth, but the out- come of pre-eminent thoughtful gentleness, affections too keen and fine ? It is the course such men as the poor Poet 30 11 III |i» 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 tor nine days running." ■X-A i\ 16?. LECTURES OX UEROl.S rrcd-up' into (»! )t anecdotes II 1 t interesting h.ive inany ■•,■»" , >f \ 1.1 little ^ Jie most ^' T[dalene^ Cowper fall into. Luther to a slight >.» rver might have seemed a timid, weak man ; modrsty, aiitctinnate shrinking tenderness the chief distinction of him. I ( i a noble valour which is roused in a heart like this, defiance, all kindled into a heavenly In Luther's Tahlc-Talk^ a posthun < and sayings collected by his friends, i now of all the Books proceeding froii Iuim. .' beautiful unconscious displays of the in i i, 10 nature he had. His behaviour at th ' 'I iliix Daughter, so still, so great and loving i'^ a' i affecting things. lie is resigned that lis litt.'' should die, yet longs inexpressibly tha she ini^lu live; — follows, in awestruck thought, the flight of her liitle soul through those unknown realms. ANvestruck ; most heart- felt, we can see; and sincere, — for after all dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing it is that we know, or can know. His little Magdalene'' shall be with God, as God wills ; for Luther too that is all ; /»/./;« is all. 2o Once, he looks-out ^ from his solitary I'atmos,* the ("astle " of Coburg,* in the middle of the night : The great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds sailing through it, ^ dumb, gaunt, huge : — who supports all that ? " None ever saw the pillars of it; yet it is supported." God supports it. We must know that God is great, that Gud 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, 3° — the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, has produced it once again ; the bread of man ! — In the garden at Witten- iH' IP IP stirred up 2 H" Margaret * H' Margaret ♦ H" W II' looks out « II' ' I'atmos' 6 6 H> Wartburg THE IIEKO AS i'KIEST U>3 berj; one cvcninjj .it sun^»t•l, \ little bird has |»erchetl for the night : I hat little bird, says Luther, above it are the star* and deep Heaven of worlds ; yet it has folded its little wings; gone trustfu'iy to rest there as in its home: the Maker f»t it has given it too a home ! — ~ Neither are mirth- ful turns wanting: there is a great free human heart in this man. The common s|)eech of him has a rugged nobleness, idiomati*. expressive, genuine; gleams here and there with beautiful jjoetic tints. One feels him to be a gre.it brother man. His love of Music, indei-d, is not ihis, as it were, the ic summary of all these affections in him ? Many .1 wild unutterability he spoke-forth ' {\ova him in the t'>nes of his flute. The Devils ried from hi- Hute, he says. Death- deAance on the one hand, ;xnd such love of music on 'he other; I could call these the two opposite loles of a great soul; between these tw(y all great hings had room. Luther's face is to me expressi' <_• of him ; in Kranach's best jwrtraits 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. Net in 20 the eyes especially ther( a wild silent sorrow ; an unnam- able'^ melancholy, the clement of all gentle and fine affec- tions; giving to the rest the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter w.is 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, Karnt ^tness. In his latter days, after all triumphs and victories, he ex- presses himself heartily weary of living ; he considers that God alone can and will regulate the course things are tak- ing, and that perhaps the Day of Jud.^jment is not far. .\s 30 for him, he longs for one thing: that God would releav him from his labour, and let him depart and be at rest. They understand little of the man who cite this in ^/wcredit 1 H' H- W spoke forth - H' W unnameable S:, ..'I ! I- ■m 164 LECTURES ON HEROES of him ! — I will call this Luther a true Great Man ; great in intellect, in courage, aifection and integrity ; one of our most lovable ' and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk; but as an Alpine mountain, — so simple, honest, spontaneous, not setting-up =* to be great at all ; there for quite another purpose than being great ! Ah yes, unsub- duable granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens ; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautiful valleys with flowers ! A right Spiritual Hero and Prophet ; once more, lo a true Son of Nature and Fact, for whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, will be thankful to Heaven. The most interesting phasis which the Reformation any- where assumes, especially for us English, is that of Puri- tanism. In Luther's own country, Protestantism soon dwindled into a rather barren affair: not a religion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling of argument, the proper seat of it not the heart ; the essence of it scep- tical contention : which indeed has jangled more and more, 20 down to Voltaireism ^ itself, — through Gustavus-Adolphus contentions onward to French- Revolution ones! But in our Island there arose a Puritanism, which even got itself established as a Presbyterian ism and National Church among the Scotch ; which came forth as a real business of the heart ; and has produced in the world very notable fruit. In some senses, one may say it is the only phasis of Protestantism that ever got to the rank of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. We must spare a few words for 30 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, > H' W loveahle -• H» H» W setting up « H' IP If> Voltairism ; i;'' THE HERO AS PKIEST 165 New England's, Oliver Oomwell's. History will have something to say about this, for some time to come ! We may censure Puritanism as we please ; and no one of us, I suppose, but would find it a very rough defective thing. But we, and all men, may understand that it was a genuine thing ; for Nature has adopted it, and it has grown, and grows. I say sometimes, that all goes by wager-of- battle ' in this world ; that strengt/i, 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 ; lo and at that little Fact of the sailing of the Mayflower, two- hundred * years ago, from Delft Haven in Holland ! Were we of open sense as the Greeks were, we had found a Poem here ; one of Nature's own Poems, such as she writes in broad facts over great continents. For it was properly the beginning of America: there were straggling settlers in America before, some material as of a body was there ; but the soul of it was first this. These poor men, driven-out * of their own country, not able well to live in Holland, de- termine on settling in the New World. Black untamed 20 forests are there, and wild savage creatures; but not so cruel as Starchamber hangmen. They thought the Earth would yield them food, if they tilled honestly ; the ever- lasting heaven would stretch, there too, overhead; they should be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well in this world of Time; worshipping in what they thought the true, not the idolatrous way. They clubbed their small means together; hired a ship, the little ship Mayflower, and made ready to set sail.* In Neal's* History of the Puritans* is an account of the 30 ceremony of their departure : solemnity, we might call it » H' H» H' wager of battle « H' W H* two hundred »H' H'H' driven out * no paragraph in W H' H* 6 H» H» Neale's • Neal (London, 1755), i. 490. w. '^ . 166 LECTVKKS OX HEROES rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their minister went down with them to the beach, and their brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined in solemn prayer,' That God would have pity on His poor children, and go with them into that waste wilderness, for He also had made that, He was there also as well as here. — Hah ! These men, I think, had r work ! The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanism was only despicable, laughable then ; but no- lo body 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-inter- est at all but this Reformation by Knox. A poor barren country, full of continual broils, dissensions, massacrings ; a people in the last state of rudeness and destitution, little 20 better perhaps than Ireland at this day. Hungry fierce barons, not so much as able to form any arrangement with each other him to divide what they fleeced from these poor drudges ; but obliged, as the Columbian Republics are at this day, to make of every alteration a revolution ; no way of changing a ministry but by hanging the old ministers on gibbets : this is a historical spectacle of no very singular significance ! ' Bravery ' enough, I doubt not ; fierce fight- ing in abundance : but not braver or fiercer than that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king ancestors ; 7ohose exploits 30 we have not found worth dwelling on ! It is a country as yet without a soul: nothing developed in it but what is lude, external, semi-animal. And now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as it were, under the ribs of this 1 H' W (the prayer too is given) « H' H» IP Scotland too. II- THE HERO AS J'A/EST 167 outward material death. A cause, the noblest of causes kindles itself, like a beacon set on high ; high as Heaven, yet attainable from Earth ; — whereby the meanest man becomes not a Citizen only, but a Member of Christ's visible Church ; a veritable Hero, if he prove a true man ! Well ; this is what I mean by a whole ' nation of heroes ; ' a be/ia'int; nation. There needs not a great soul to make a hero ; there needs a god-created soul which will be true to its origin ; that will be a great soul ! The like has been seen, we find. The like will be again seen, under wider forms than the Presbyterian : there can be no lasting good done till then. — Impossible! say some. Possible.^ Has it not bce/i, in this world as a practised fact ? Did Hero-worship fail in Knox's case ? Or are we made of other clay now ? Did the Westminster Confession of Faith add some new property to the soul of man .' God made the soul of man. He did not doom any soul of man to live as a Hypothesis and Hearsay, in a world filled with such, and with the fatal v. oik and fruit of such ! But to return : This that Knox did for his Nation, I say, we may really call a resurrection as from death. It was not a smooth business ; but it was welcome surely, and cheap at that price, had it been far rougher. On the whole, cheap at any price ; — as life is. The jjeople began to Ihr : they needed first of all to do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Literature and Thought, Scotch In dustry ; James Watt, David Hume, Walter Scott, Robert Burns: I find Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons and phenomena ; 30 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. .\ tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh spread into a universal 20 m. J t , 168 LECrUKEH ON HEROES battle and struggle over all these realms ; — there came out, after fifty-years ' struggling, what we all call the ' Glo- rious Revolution,' a Habeas-Corptts 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 Crom- wells, Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenanters, wrestling, bat- lo tling for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, bemired, — before a beautiful Revolution of Eighty-eight can step-over * them in official pumps and silk-stockings, with universal three times- three ! It seems to me hard measure that this Scottish man, now after three-hundred* years, should have to plead like a culprit before the world ; intrinsically for having been, in such way as it was then possible to be, the bravest of all Scotchmen ! Had he been a poor Half-and-half, he could 20 have crouched into the corner, like so many others ; Scotland had not been delivered ; and Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotchman to whom, of all others, his coun- try and the world owe a debt. He has to plead that Scot- land would forgive him for having been worth to it any million 'unblamable '* Scotchmen that need no forgiveness! He bared his breast to the battle ; had to row in French galleys, wander forlorn in exile, in clouds and storms ; was censured, shot-at ^ through his windows ; had a right sore fighting life : if this world were his place of recompense, he 30 had made but a bad venture of it. I can. ot apologise " for » H' W fifty years 2 1I« IP W Schwiednitz * H' H* H* pass over * H' H« H' step over » H' H* H' three hundred « H' H= unblameable ' H' H» H' shot at » H' H* apologize THE HERO AS PKIKST 169 Knox. To him it is very indifferent, these two-hundred- and-tifty ' years or more, what men say of him. But we, having got above all those details of his battle, and living now in clearness on the fruits of his victory, we, lor ^ our own sake, ought to look through the rumors and controver- sies enveloping the man, into the man himself. For one thing, 1 will remark that this post of Prophet to his Nation was not of his seeking ; Knox had lived forty years quietly obscure, before he became conspicuous. He was the son of poor parents ; had got a college education*; lo become a Priest ; adopted the Reformation, and seemed well content to guide his own steps by the light of it, nowise unduly intruding it on others. He had lived as Tutor in gentlemen's families ; preaching when any body of persons wished to hear his doctrine: resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do it ; not ambitious of more ; not fancying himself capable of more. In this entirely obscure way he had reached the age of forty; was with the small body of Reformers who were standing siege in St. Andrew's Castle, — when one 20 day in their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhor- tation 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 30 1 IP W H' two hundred and fifty - H' IF we for ■' IP IP I P college-education < IP IP IP stand up 'I 5 * * „ .r,1 II 170 LECrUNES ON JIEKOES attempted to reply ; he could say no word ; — burst into a flood of tears, and ran out. It is worth remembering, that scene. He was in grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a baptism he was called to be baptised ^ withal. He 'burst into tears.' Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sincere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qualities or faults, lo is among the truest of men. With a singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact ; the truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the reality may seem, on that and that only can he take his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. Andrew's was taken, had been sent as (ialley- slaves, — some officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blasphemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother ? 20 Mother of God } said Knox, when the turn came to him : This is no Mother of God : this is ' ■xpentcd IncJd,' — a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on it ! She is fitter for swimming, I think, than for being worshipped, added Knox ; and flung the thing into the river. It was not very cheap jesting there : but come of it what might, this thing to Knox was and must continue nothing other than the real truth; it was z. pented brcdd : 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 30 and would prosper ; the whole world could not put it down. Reality is of God's making ; it is alone strong. How many pented bredds, pretending to be real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped ! — This Knox cannot live but by fact : 1 II' IP baptized * no paraipaph in IP IT IP k *, THE HEKO AS PA'/EST \1\ he clings to reality as the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance to us how a man, by sincerity itself, becomes heroic : it is the grand gift he has. We find in Knox a good honest intellectual talent, no transcendent one; — a narrow, inconsiderable man, as compared with Luther : but in heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as we say, he has no superior ; nay, one might ask, What equal he has? The heart of him is of tie true Prophet cast. "He lies there," said the Karl of Morton at his grave, "who never feared the face of man."' He lo resembles, more than any of the moderns, an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid narrow- looking adherence to (iod's truth, stern rebuke in the name of Cod 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 20 fills us with indignation. On reading the actual narrative of the business, what Knpx 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 nie about as fine as the circumstances would permit ! Knox was not there to do the courtier; he came on another errand. Whoever, reading these colloquies of his with the (Jueen, thinks they are vulgar insolences of a plebeian jiriest to a delicate high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be 30 polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved untrue to the nation and Cause of Scotland. A man who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a hunting-field for intriguing ambitious (kiises, and the Cause of (Jod trampled I :.j I ..I •: ■I! 172 LECTURES ON HEROES underfoot ' of Falsehoods, Formulas and the Devil's Cause, had no method of making himself agreeable ! " Better that women weep," said Morton, "than that bearded men be forced to weep." Knox was the constitutional opposition- party in Scotland : the Nobles of the country, called by their station to take that post, were not found in it ; Knox had to go, or no one. The hapless Queen ; — but the still more hapless Country, if she were made happy ! Mary herself was not without sharpness enough, among her 10 other qualities : "Who are you," said she once, "that pre- sume to school the nobles and sovereign of this realm ? " — " Madam, a subject born within the same," answered he. Reasonably answered ! If the 'subject ' have truth to speak, it is not the 'subject's ' footing that will fail him here. — We blame Knox for his intolerance. Well, surely it is good that each of us be as tolerant as possible. Yet, at bottom, after all the talk there is and has been about it, what is tolerance ? Tolerance has to tolerate the ////essen- tial ; and to see well what that is. Tolerance has to be -'3 noble, measured, just in its very wrath, when it can toler- ate no longer. But, on the whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate ! We * are here to resist, to control and vanquish withal." We do not 'tolerate,'" Falsehoods,* Thiev- eries, Iniquities,* when they fasten on us ; we say to them, Thou art false, thou "' art not tolerable * ! We are here to extinguish* Falsehoods, and' put an end to them,' in some wise way ! I will not quarrel so much with the way ; the doing of the thing is our great concern. In this sense Knox was, full surely, intolerant. 30 A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike," for 1 ir IP H-' underfoot ^"^ not in ir « IP tolerate ** IP Falsehoods, Iniquities I!' and unjust " IP extiHi^uish ' "^ not in IP 8 IP IP IP such like THE HERO AS PKIEST 173 teaching the truth in his own land, cannot always he in the mildest hiiniour! I am not prepared to say that Knox had a soft temper ; ncr do I know that lie had what we call an ill temper. An ill nature 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 .Sovereignty in that wild realm, he who was only 'a subject born within lo the same : ' this of itself will prove to us that he was found, close at hand, to be no mean acrid man ; but at heart a healthful, strong, sagacious man. Such alone can bear rule in that kind. They blame him for puUing-down ' cathedrals, and so forth, as if he were a seditious rioting demagogue : precisely the reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to cathedrals and the rest of it, if we examine ! Knox wanted no pulling-down '■'of stone edifices ; he wanted leprosy and darkness to be thrown out of the lives of men. Tumult was not his element; it was the tragic feature of ::o his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. Kvery such man is the born enemy of Disorder ; hates to be in it : but what then ? Smooth Falsehood is not Order; it is the general sumtotal of /-^/.forder. Order is 7/7////, each thing standing on the basis that belongs to it: Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein of drollery in him ; which I like much, in combination with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the ridiculous. H fJistory,, with its rough earnestness, is curiously enliv- 3° enc with this. When the two Prelates, entering (Ilasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence ; march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitching one another's 1 II' II' H' pulling down ^ h' H« H^ pulling dovm 1^' W 174 LECTUKES OX HEkOES rochets, and at last flourishing their crosiers like quarter staves, it is a great sight for him everyway ' ! Not mockery, scorn, bitterness alone ; though there is enough of that too. But a true, loving, illuminating laugh mounts-up ^ over the earnest visage ; not a loud laugh ; you would say, a lau<4h 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 liourdeaux too, we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his ; a cheery social lo man, with faces that loved him ! They go far wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, shrieking fanatic. Not at all : he is one of the solidcst of men. I'ractical. cautious-hopeful, patient ; a most shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he has very much the type of character we assign to the Scotch at present : a certain sardonic taciturnity is in him ; insight enough ; and a stouter heart than he himself knows of. He has the power of holding his peace over many things which do not vitally concern him, — "They ? what are they?" Hut the thinj,' 20 which does vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of; and in a tone the whole world shall be made lo hear; all the more emphatic for his lonj^ silence. . This Prophet of the Scotch is to me no hateful man ! — He had a sore tight of an existence: wrestling with l'oi)es and Principalities ; in defeat, contention, life-long strugjjic ; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as an exile. A son- fight : but he won it. " Have you hope ? " they asked him in his last moment, when he could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, 'pointed upwards with his finger,' and so 30 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. • 11' W W every way a H" H' IP mounts up f II' II» IPhonesthearted « H' W IP him. I HE Ui:.kO AS FRIES T 17"! One word more as to the letter of Knf)x's work. The unforgivable ' ottence in him is, that he wished to set-up ^ Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, he strove to make the (iovernment of Scotland a Tluvcracy. This indeed is properly the sum of his offences, the essential sin; for which what pardon can there be? It is most true, he did, at bottom, consciously or unconsciously, mean a Theocracy, or (iovernment of (lod. He did niean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatising or whatever else they might lo be doing, should walk according to the (jospel of Christ, and understand that this was their Law, su|)nme over all laws. He hoped once to see such a thing realised ; and the Petition, Thy Kingdotn comcy no longer an empty word. He was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons clutch hold of the ( 'hurch's property ; when he expostulated that it was not secular property, that it was spiritual prop- erty, and should be turned to ////(• churchly uses, education, schools, worship ; -and the Regent Murray had to answer, with a shrug of the shoulders, "It is a devout imagina- 20 tion ! " This was Knox's scheme of right and truth ; this he zealously endeavoured after, to realise it. If we think his scheme of truth was too narrow, was not true, we may rejoice that he could not realise it ; that it remained after two centuries of effort, unrealisable, and is a 'devout imagi- nation ' still. But how shall we blame /lim for struggling to realise it ? Theocracy, Government of (lod, is precisely the thing to be struggled for ! All Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. Hildebrand wished a Theocracy ; (.Tomwell wished it, fought for it; Mahomet attained it. 3° Nay, is it not what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must wish ? That right and truth, or (lod's Law, reign » H' 11^ unforgiveable » IP IP IP set up # ' 176 LECTVA'KS ON nhKOHS supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well namt-cl in Knox's time, and namable ' in all times, a revealed * Will of Ood') towards which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. VAIl true Reformers, as I said, are by the nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. How far such Ideals can ever be introduced into Prac- tice, and at what point our impatience with their non introduction ought to begin, is always a question. I think 10 we may say safely, Let them introduce themselves as far as they can contrive to do it ! If they are the true faith of men, all men ought to be more or less impatient always where they are not found introduced. There will never be wanting Regent-Murrays enough to shrug their shoulders, and say, " A devout imagination ! " We will praise the Hero- priest rather, who does what is in him to bring them in ; and wears-out,* in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make a God's Kingdom of this Karth. The Karth will not become too godlike ! » H« H» nameable »H' H* HI wears out LKCTIRK V , :^ THE HEKO AS MAN OK I.KTTl.Ks. lOIIV^ON, IKirsSKAf, IHIRNS [Tuenday, 19th May 1S40.] • Hkr H* W IP date abme title. - M' IP IP shew »H" IP IP speak forth «77 ,4 ,, % II 178 LECTURES OA I/EKOES this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living, — is a rather curious spectacle ! Few shapes of Heroism can be more unexpected. Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes : the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world! It seemed absurd to us, that men, in their rude admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god, and worship 10 him as such ; some wise great Mahomet for one god- inspired, and religiously follow his Law for twelve centu- ries: but that a wise great Johnson, a IJurns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle nondescript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and ap- plauses thrown him, that he might live thereby ; this per- haps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis of things ! — Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that determines the material, this same Man-of- Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important 20 modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of ail. What he teaches, the whole world will do and make. The world's manner of dealing with him is the most signiticanl feature of the world's general position. Looking well at his life, we may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life of those singular centuries which have produced him, in which we ourselves live and work. There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine ; as in every kind there is a genuine and a sjuirious. If lli >i< be taken to mean genuine, then I say tlie Hero as Man ot 30 Letters will be found discharging a function for us whiili is ever honourable, ever the highest: and was once well known to be the highest. He is uttering-forth,' in such way as he has, the inspired soul of him ; all that a man, ii; > H' II- 11' ullcring forth THE HERO AS MAX OF LETTERS 17'J any case, can do. I ^tl^ inspired ; for what we call 'origi- nality,' '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 Kternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial : his being is in that ; he declares that abroad, by act or speech as it may be, in declaring himself abro.ad. 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' not the fact, and are untrue to it,' in lo most times ; the strong few are strong, heroic, perennial, because it cannot be hidden from them, 'ihe Man of Let- ters, 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, I'riest, Divinity for doing; which all manner of Heroes, by speech or by act, are sent into the world to do. Fichte the (lerman I'hilosopher delivered, some forty years ago at Krlangen,- a highly remarkable Course of Lectures on this subject: *■ Leber das Wcsen des (,e/ehrteti, 20 On the Nature of the Literary Man.' Lichte, in conform- ity with the Transcendental Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished teacher, declares first : i'hat all things which we see or work with in this Karth, especially we ourselves and all persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensu- ous Appearance: that under all there lies, as the essence of them, what he calls the ♦ Divine Idea of the World ; ' this is the Reality which 'lies at the l)ottom of all Appearance.' To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognisable in the world ; they live merely, says Fichte, among the sujier- 30 ticiaiities, practicalities and shows' of the world, not dreaming that there is anything divine under them. But • 1 II' know it not H^ W know not llie fact, and arc untrue to it -il'll-Juna » II' HMP shews .t '■ I : '•.1 !* ^i 180 I.ECTUNES ON IfKKOKS the Man of Letters is sent hither specially that he may discern for himself, and make manifest to us, this same Divine Idea : in every new generation it will manifest itself in a new dialect ; and he is there for the purpose of doinj; ihat. 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 10 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 think- ing 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 unfoldini; the Godlike to men : Men of Letters are a perpetual Priest- hood, from age to age, teaching all men that a Ciod 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 20 the World,' for 'that which lies at the bottom of Appear- ance.' In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness : he is the light of the world; the world's Priest; — guiding it, like ;i sacred Pillar of Kire, in its dark )Mlgrimage through tiie waste of Time. Fichte discrin^inates with sharp zeal tlie true Literary Man, what we here call the Ifiio 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 30 is, let him live where else he like, in what pomps and pros perities he like, no Literary Man ; he is, says Fichte, a 'Bungler, Stumper.'' Or at best, if he belong to the prosaii provinces, he may be a ' Hodman ; ' Fichte even calls him ^no panis^raf^h in II' 1 1-' II^ TIIK ItERO AS MAX OF LETTERS 181 4 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 hun- dred 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 %ve 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 lo imaged once more as godlike, the workmanship and temple of a (lod. Illuminated all, not in fierce impure tire-splen- dour 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 20 still more in what he did not say and did not do ; to me a noble spectacle : 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 useless to attempt speak- ing of him in this case. Speak as I might, Goethe, to the great maj )rity of you, would remain problematic, vague ; 30 no impression but a false one could be realised. Him we must leave to future times. Johnson, K'.irns, Rousseau, three great figures from a prior time, from a far inferior '1!' 11- IP liiiiulred ami fifty "- no paragraph in II' II- II' i ' : -l n "l! fir 182 LECTURES OX HEROES State of circumstances, will suit us licltcr here. Three men of the Eighteenth Century ; the conditions of their life far more resemble what those of ours still are in Kngland, than what (Joethe's in (lermany 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, or ' victorious interpretation of 10 that 'Divine Idea.' It is rather the Tombs of three Liter- ary Heroes that I have to show'- you. There'* 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 disorganised condition of society : how ill many arranged forces of society fulfil their work ; how many powerful forces are seen working in a wasteful, cliaotic, altogether unarranged manner, it is too just a complaint, 20 as we all know. But perhaps if we look at this of Hook-, and the Writers of Hooks, we shall find here, as it were. the summary of all other disorganisation*; a sort ol heart, from which,* and to whicli,' all other confusion circu lates in the world I Considering what Hook-writers do in the world, and what the world does with Hook-writers, ! should say. It is the most anom:ilous thing the world u present has to show." We should get into a sea far Ik yond sounding, did we attempt to give account of tlii> but we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. I'lii 3° worst element in the life of these three Literary Heroes ' not in II' 11= «n' IP IP shew "IP These ■• IP (hsi)r>;ani/ation ■'■'•• IP II- IP \viii(h iiiul to wliiili Ml' IP ll^shdW TIJE JIEKO AS MAX Of- l.ETTJ-.NS 183 was, that they found their business and position such a chaos. On the beaten road there is tolerable travellinjj; but it is sore work, and many have to perish, fashioning a path through the impassable ! Our pious I'athers, feeling well what importance lay in the speaking of man to men, founded churches, made en dowments, regulations; everywhere in thr civilised world there is a I'ulpit, environed with all manner of complex dignified appurtenances and furtherances, tha therefrom a man with the tongue may, to best advantage, address his lo 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 ! Hut now with the art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a total change has come over that business. The Writer of a Hook, is not he a J'reacher 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 In- do his work right, whoever do it wrong; that the nv report not falsely, for then all the other members are astray ! Well ; 20 how he may do his work, whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a point whicii no man in the world has taken the pains to think of. lo a certain shopkeei^T, try- ing to get some money for his Ijooks, if lucky, he is of s(mie 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. 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 tilings man has devised. Odin's Riin,s were the first form of the work of a Hero ; Books, written words, .ire still mi- raculous Riiius, the latest form ! In Hooks lies the soul of 30 ^ :f \ ? IM l.l:CTri:]:S ox IIKKOES the whole Past Time the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has alto- gether vanished like a dream. Mighty Heets 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; ail is gone now to some ruined frag- ments, dumb mournful wrecks and blocks : but the Books of Greece! There Greece, to every thinker, still very 10 literally lives ; can be called-up' again into life. No magic Rune is stranger than a Hook. All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been : it is lying as in magic preserva- tion in the pages of Hooks. They are tiie chosen posses- sion of men. Do not Hooks still accomplish ?iurlogist ever did such wonders as, on the actual tii m Karth, some Hooks have done ! What built St. Paul's Cathedral? Look at the heart of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Hook,^ — the word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his Midianitish herds, four-thousand ' years ago, in the wildernesses of Sinai! It is the strangest of things, yet nothing is truer. 30 With the art of Writing, of which Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively insignificant rorollary, the true reign of miracles for mankind commenced, it related, 1 M' 11=^ II' called u]) - II' W \V llKHKiw I'.ook ■' 11" H- II' four thousand I ■! THE HERO AS AfAX OF LETTEKS 18S with a wondrous new contifjuity and iK'r|)etiiaI closeness, the Past and Distant with tiic Tresent 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: teachinjj, preaching;, },'ovcrnin{,', and all else. 'lo look at Teachinj;, for instance. Tniversities are a notable, respectable product of the modern aj;es. Their exist- ence too is modified, to the very basis of it, by the existence of Hooks. I'niversiiies arose while there were yet no Mooks procurable; while a man, for a sin-,'le liook, had to give an lo estate of land. I'hat, in those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners round him, face to face, was a neces- sity for him. If you wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and listen to Abelard. rhou.sands, as many as thirty-thousand,' went to hear Abelard and that meta- physical 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 .ill places t!ie best 20 place for him was that. I-'or 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, i)rivileges, encouragements, and named it I nirersitiU, or School of all Sciences : the University of Paris, in its essential char- acters, was there. The model of all subsequent Iniversi- ties; which down even to these days, for six centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. Such, I conceive, was 30 the origin of I'niversities. It is clear, however, that with this simple circumstance, facility of getting Hooks, the whole conditions of the busi- 1 II' II' IP thirty thousand I i| til 'I,, •I 186 LECTURES ON HEROES nc'ss from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Print- ing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or sujierseded them ! The Teacher ' needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might s/>ctik 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 flreside, much more effectu- ally to learn it ! — Doubtless there is still i)eculiar virtue in Speech ; even writers of Hooks may still, in some circum- stances, fmd it convenient to speak also, — witness our 10 present meeting here! There is, une would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain ; to Universities among others. IJut the limits of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascertained; much less put in practice: the University which would completely take-in- that great new fact, of the existence of Printed Books, and stand on a cle.ar footing for the Nineteenth Uentury as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think 20 of it, all that a University, or final highest School can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing, — teach us to ;vvr/. We learn to rani, 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 know- ledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the liooks 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 ot Books. But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 30 changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduc- tion of Books. The Church is the working recognised Union of our I'riests or Prophets, of those who by wisi- While there was no Writ- teaching guide the souls of men. 1 II' ttaiher •^ II' IP I (Make in THE HEKO AS A/.tX OF LI-.TTEKS 187 ing, even while there w;is no K.isy-\vritinj; or /'rhitini;;, the preaching of the voice \v;i.s the natural sole method of per- forming this. Ittit now with Itooks! - He that can write a true Hook, lo persuade Kngland, is not he the Itishop and Archbishop, the Primate of Kngland and of All ' Kngland ? I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Hooks, these if/v the real working effective Church of a modern country. Nay, not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed Hooks ? The noble sentiment which a gifted soul lo has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings meloily into our hearts, — is not this essentially/ if we will under- stand it, of the nature of worship .' I'here 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 eflluenco of tiie I'ountain of all He.auty ; as the hiVidwritin:^, made visible there, of the great Maker of the Universe "i He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a sacred i'saliu. Kssentially so. How 20 much more he who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart the noble di)iiiLjs. feelings, darinj^s and endurances of a brother m;iu ! He lias verily touched our hearts as with a live coal from tlir ,iltar. Perhaps there is no wot-shap more authentic' Lit(-rature, so far as it is Literature, is an ' apocalypse of Nature,' a revealing of the 'open secret.' It may well enough be named, in Fichte's style, a 'continuous revela- tion ' of the (lodlike in the Tei'estrial and Common The (IrKllike does ever, in very truth, endure there; is brought ,30 out, now in this dialect, now in that, with varit)us degrees of clearness: all true giftetl Singers and Speakers are, con- 1 II' W II' all 2 IP II- IP shews •' II' (I IP show ^ no fara^raph in 11' IP II ^ --?■ i .w yenuint ly 10 there! For' all true singin;; is of the nature of worslup: as indeed all true worA-iii!^ may be said to In;, — whereat such shij^iH)^ is but the record, and tit melodious representa- tion, to us.' Fragments of real Mhutdi Litur>j;y ' and « Body* of Homilies,' strangely ci sguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Hooks are our Church too. Or turning now to the (Government of men. Witenage- mote, old rarliament, was a great thing. The affairs of 20 the nation were there deliberated and decided ; what we were to do as a nation. But does not, thougii the name Parliament subsists, the parliamentary ilebate go on now, everywhere ar.d at all times, in a far more co.nprchensive way, out of Parliament altogether? Burke said tlicre were Three Estates in Parliament ; but, in the Reporters' (Jallery yonder, there sat a I'oiDtli KsUitc more important far than they all. It is not a figure of sixiech, or a witty saying ; it is a literal fact, — very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes 30 necessarily out of Writing, I say oiten, is equivalent to De- mocracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writ- ing brings Printing; brings universal everyday extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speak » 1 not in IP • H' body f THE IIEKO AS MAX OF LETTF.RS 189 ing now to the whole nation, becomes i i)owt'r, .1 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 tonjjuj' Ahich others will listen to; this and nothing more i> requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtu.ally thire. Add only, that whatsoever power exists will hav»* itself, by and by, organised ; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unen- 10 cumbered,' visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant. — On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of tlie things which man can do or make here below, by far tlie most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we caU Itooks! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them; — from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew B1PPLIED IIVHGE Ir 1653 East Main Street Rochester. Neur York 14609 USA (716) 482 -0300 - Phone (716) 288 - 5989 - Fax 190 LECTURES ON IIKKOKS of man can have. No wonder it is, in al! ways, the activest and noblest. All this, of the importance and supreme importance of the Man of Letters in modern Society, and how the Press is to such a degree superseding the Pulpit, the Senate, the Senattis Acailcmkus and much else, has been admitted for a good while; and recognised often enough, in late times, with a sort of sentimental triumph and wonderment. It seems to me, the Sentimental by and by will have to give 10 place to the I'ractical. If Men of Letters an- so incal- culably 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 Ishmaelites among us ! What- soever thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power will cast-off ' its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth ^ one day with palpably -rticulated, universally visible power. That one man wea the clothes, and take tlie wages, of a function which is done by quite another: theie can be no 20 profit in this ; this is nijt right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the making oi it right, — what a business, for long times to come! Sure enough, this that we call Organisation of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, encumbered ^ with all manner of complexities. If you asked me what were the best possible organisation 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 exceeded my faculty ! It is not 30 one man's faculty ; it is that of many succc e men turned earnestly upon it, that will bring-out* even approximate 1 IP IF IP cast off ni' 11= IPincumlxTed 2 H' JI^ IPstepfcirth * II' II- IP arrangement, '^W W- IP bring out <' i Till: HERO AS MAX 01 LETTI-.NS 191 solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us could say. IJut if you ask, \\ hich is the worst t I answer : This which we now have, that Chaos should sit umpire in it ; this is the worst. I"o the best, or any good one, there is yet a long way. One remark I must not omit, That royal or parliamentary grants of money are i^y no means the chief thing wanted ! To give our Men of Letters sti|)ends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. ^ On the whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence lo of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor ; that there ought o Le Literary Men poor, — to show ' whether they are g luiine or not ! Men dicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to A;', were instituted in the Christian Church; a most natural and even necessary development of the spirit of ( hristianitv. It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degrada- ticm. We may say. that he who has not known those things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they -o have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go barefoot, in co;irse 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 I" Begging is not in our course at the present time: but for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not per- haps the better for being poor.' It is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any ,lo kind is not the goal he has to aim at. Pride, vanity, ill- conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in ■ 1 I "I? I , \ ♦ T.! ' 11 II- ir;,hcw * no paragraph in II' W IP 1. l'J2 LECTURES OiX HEROES every heart ; need, above all, to he cast-out ' of his heart,— to be, with whatever pangs, t(jrn-out'of it, cast-forth '■ from it; as a thing worthless. IJyron, born rich and noble, made- out * even less than Hums, poor and plebeian. Who knows but, in that same 'best possible organisation 'as yet far o IT, Poverty may still enter as an important element.' What if our Men of Letters, men setting-up "' to be .Spiritual Hero«:s, were still then, as they row are, a kind of ' involuntary monas- tic order;' bound still to this same ugly Poverty, - till they lo 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 con- fine it there ; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get farther. Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for them, the tit assigner of them, all settled, -how is the Burns to be recognised that merits these .> He must pa.ss through the ordeal, and prove hi- If. 77//.f ordeal ; this wild welter of a chaos which is crJled Literary Life : this 20 too is a kind of ordeal ! There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever con- tinue. 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 strug- gle .' There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atom 30 one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine « lost by the way ; your > H' IP IP cast out 4 H> IIMP made out 2 IP W IP torn out •> II' fr^ IP setting up 3 IP 11= IP ca.st forth ' H' IP IP nine hundred and ninety nine THE HKKO AS MAX Ol- LETTERS V)i royal Johnson lan<;uisliini2j inactive in jjarrcts, or harnessed to the yoke of I'rinter (ave'; your Hums dyin;; broken- hearted" as a danger ': your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling Irench Revolutions by his para- doxes : this, as we said, is clearlv enougii the 'i^vrst reirula- tion. I'he A'.f/, alas, is far from us ! And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming ; advanc- ing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: tliis is a prophecy one can risk. I'or so soon as iiieii get to dis- cern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about \c arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it ; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, (Governing (lasses at present extant in the world, there is no class comparable for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Hooks. 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 seme help for I'.urns. " Ves," adds*^ Mr. Soutliey, "it will lake care of itself; and of yoH too, if you do not look to it ! " 20 'I'he result to individual Men of Letters is not the momen- tous one ; they are but individuals, an int'.nitesimal fraction of the great body; they can struggle en, and live or else die, as they have been wont. Put it deeply concerns the whole society, whether it will set its li:^ht on high places, to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of wild waste (not without conilagration ), as heretofore! Light is tlie one th;ng wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of the world, the world '' will tight its battle victoriously, and be tin best world man can make 30 it. I call" this anomaly of a disorganic Literary (lass i I H t •« f 1. 1 ' II" H= Cavf. ■ U' 11= Causer, ■ IM .niswtrs - IP IP' bn.kenlitartucl ^ IP IP IP applied tu '■ IP it ■ IP li^- rP.aiiul :mi i 194 LhCTUKES OX tH':iiOES the heart of all othei anomalies, at once product and parent ; some good arrangement f.>r tliat would be as the puiutHm salicns of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, -n some European countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some beginnings ot an arrangement for the Literary ("lass; indicating the gradual possibility of such. I believe that it is possible ; that it will have to he possible. By far the most interesting fact I hear about the ( lii- 10 nese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which excites endless curiosity even in ti.e 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 ////successful ; yet a small degree of success is precious; the very attempt how preciou. ! There does seem to be, all over China, a more or less active search everywhere to discover tiie men of talent that grow up in the young generation. .Schools there 20 are for every one: a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The youths who distinguish themselves in tlie lower school are promoted into favourable stations in the higher, that they may still more distinguish themselves, — forward and forward: it appears 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 ; 30 but there is no doubt they Iui7e some Understanding,* - without which no man can ! Neither is Understanding a tool^ as we are too apt to figure ; ' it is a //(///(/ which can I 11' HMI^ shewn Ml' thtm, 3 H' H» H^ understanding THE HEKO AS MAX Ol- I.KTTENS 195 handle any tool' Try these men : they .ire of all others the best worth trying. - Surely there is no kind of {govern- ment, constitution, revolution, social apparatus or arranj;e- ment, that I know of in this world, so promising to one's scientific curiosity as this. The man of intellect at the top of affairs : this is the aim of .all constitutions and revolu- tions, if they have any aim. For the man cf true intellect, as I assert and believe always, is the noblehearted man withal, the true, just, humane and valiant man. (let liim for governor, all i.i got ; fail to get him, though you had lo Constitutions plentiful as bl.ackberries, and a Parliament in every vilLage, there is nothing yet got ! — These things look strange, truly ; and are not such as we commonly speculate upon. Hut 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 announcement, audible enough, that the old Kmpire of Routine has ended ; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have 20 been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large masses of mankind, in every society of our Kurope, 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 tiiird-rate potatoes,' the things which have been must decidedly pre- pare to alter themselves ! — I will now quit this of the organisation of Men of Letters. il e: '•'1 ''•7 Alas, the evil that press( ' heaviest on those Literary 30 Heroes of ours was not the vvant of organisation for Men of Letters, but a far deeper one; out uf which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the Literary ^Lan, and for all 196 LECTUNES OX HEROES men, had, ns from their fountain, taken rise. That our Hero as Man of letters had to travel without hij,'hway, companionless, through an inorganic chaos, -and to leave his own life and faculty lying there, as a partial contribu- tion towards /«j///><;' some highway through it: this, had not his faculty itself been so perverted and paralysed, he might have put-up • with, might have considered to be but the common lot of Heroes. His fatal misery was the spirit- ual paralysis, so we may name it, vjf the Age in which his 10 life lay ; whereby his life too, do what he might, was half- paralysed ! The Eighteenth was a .s; in\:\ contrivinj,', he, the pour I'h.il.iris nils tniscr.ibly 'lyiii};'! Ik-'licl I tictine to he the healthy act of a man^ mind. It is a mysterious indescrilj.ihle process, that of },'ettinj{ to believe; indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind «iven us, not that it may cavil and aryue, but that it may s^e into somethini,', ;,'ive us clear belief and understandin;; about something', whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. ( cr- lo tainly we do not rush out. cluuhup- the lirst thin;; we (ind, and stt iij;htway believe that ! All manner of doubt, inquiry, fr*ctVi< as it is named, about all manner of objects, dwells in every reasonable mind. It is the mystic working of the mind, on the object it is j,',/////;' to know and believe, lielief conns out of all this, above j,'round, like the tree from its hidden r,>,>/s. Hut now if. even on common things, we require that a man keep his doubts si/r/i/, and not babble of them till they in some measure become atVirmations or denials; how much more in regard to the highest things, :3 impossible to speak-of ' in words at all! I'hat a m:u\ parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which nieans at best only the manner of /,/////^' us your thought, your^ belief or disbelief, about a thing) is the triumph and true work of what intellect he has: alas, this is as if you should orcrtuni 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 ^1 I-'or tiie ' ■•.'pticism, as I said, is not intellectual only ; it 2P is m^ral :i..,o ; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole ' IM II- dying!— ♦«<-//// W MI' IP IPclutch up ' H' II- H^shew 8 ir H- H^ siJtak of •• II' 11^ HJ turned up ' H« H» H3 going on I Tin: llh.k'O AS MAX ,)/. It TTINS 2<>l soul. A man liv«-s l.y htlievin;; snmrthin- ; not |.\ ,l,.|,.tt- iriK and .irfiuin;,' .ilu.ut m , ,y tl.in-s. A vi.l i-.,sc f<.r him whi-n ill that he can m.in,i«f to hciifvu is v.nu'thinn '>«' can button in hin |).H.ket, anne-oiu ; Quacks have comein.* Accordin-iy. what ( entury. sincJ the end ol uie Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with (Quacks as that Ki-hteentl. .' Consider them, with their tumid sentimental va|)ourin;,' about virtue, benevo- lence, -the wretched orl,rs suffrage ! How the duties of 'the world will he done in that case, what (piantities of error, which means fadure, which means sorrow and miser-, to some atul to 30 many, will gradually accumulate in all provinces of the world's business, we need not compute. H 11 ' IP mournfullest 2 H' W W dexterous ' If 11= IP Ron., out * II' H-- IP come in i 202 LECTURES OX HEROES It seems to me, you lay your finjjer here on the heart of the world's maladies, when you call it a Sceptical 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 10 is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plau- sibility and Falsity ; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with (lod- hood, 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 Perform- ances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy, very great- lookinjr Simulacrum with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepi)in,^ aside: Thou ail not true; th ^u art not extant, only semblant ; go thy way ' — Yes, hollow Formulism, gross l?enthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. .\n unbelieving F-ighteenth Century is but an excejition, - such as now and then occurs. I prophesy 30 that the world will once more become sincere: a believin'^ world ; with iiiiViy 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. F.ach one of us here, let /•///•; //A7v'(> ./.-, M.i.v i>i- ijyrrr.h'S 203 I ■J ,3 I i the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victori- ous, has he not a Life f)f his own to lead ? One Life ; a little gleam of i'ime between two Kternities ; no second chance to us foreverniore I 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 trutii, I never heard of ' worlds ' being 'saved ' in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is lo itself a piece of the Kighteenth Century with its windy sen- timentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of the 7iV'/7r/ I will trust confidently to the NLiker of the world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more comjjetent to! In brief, for the world's sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insin- cerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone. Now it was under sucii conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. Times in 20 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 l-'act, and would forever ccjiitinue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world, had yet dawned. No intimation ; not even any I'"rench Revolution, — which we define to be . a Truth once more, though a iruth clad in helltire I How different was the laither's pilgrimage, with its assured goal, from the Johnson's,' girt with mere traditions, sujjposi- tions, grown now incredible, unintelligible ! Mahomet's 30 Formulas were of 'wood waxed and oiled,' and could be /'///7// out of one's way: poor Johnson's were far more (lifTicuIt to burn. — The strouLf man will ever tind iiwrk. ■i " i •I MwBWH h Ml' 11-^ l.-hiK-^un's ' 204 r. EC TURKS OX IfKKOES which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But to make-out ' a victory, in those circum- stances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any. Not obstruction, disorganisa- tion, Bookseller Osborne and Four-pence-halfpenny a day ; not this alone ; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Karth ; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven ! We need not won- der that none of those Three men rose to victory. That lo they fought truly is the highest praise. With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living victori- ous 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 confused War of the Giants ; under which, their strength and life spent, they now lie buried. I have already written of these three Literary Heroes, expressly or incidentally ; what I suppose is known to most of you; what need not be spoken or written a second time. 20 They concern us here as the singular J^rophcts of that singular age ; for such they 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 unconsciously, struggling, to'' be genuine, and plant themselves on the everlasting truth of things. This to a degree that emi- nently distinguishes them from the poor artificial mass of their contemporaries ; and renders them worthy to be con- sidered as Speakers, in some measure, of the everlasting 30 truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs. By Nature herself a noble necessity was laid on them to be so. They were 1 II' W Y\} make out « H' H* reflexions * H' struggling to THE IIKRO AS MAX OF LETTERS 205 men of such magnitude that they could not live on unreal- ities, — 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. the 1 o a certain extcm, mey were rions oi mature once an age of Artitice ; once more, ( )riginal Men. As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great Knglish 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, ic Priest, sovereign Kuler ! On the whole, a man must not complain of his 'element,' of his 'time,' or the like; it is thriftless work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he is there to make it bettei ! — Johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favourablest outward circum- stances, Johnson's life could have been other than a pain- ful one. The world might have had more of profitable ivork out of him, or less ; but his effort against the world's work could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for 20 his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element of dis- eased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. At all events, poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria, physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots-in - on him dull incurable misery : the Ncsmis'- shirt not to be stript-olf.'^ which is his own natural s' in ! In this manner he had to live. iMgure him there, wi . his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and un- speakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Karth ; eagerly devouring what sjjiritual » H' II- IIJ gave way - IP II- II ' sli.-ots in » IP II- IPstript off 30 ( ■ r '-'.I .; i i I \\ 206 I.ECrUKHS 0\ HEROES v- thing he could come at ; school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The larg- est soul that was in all Kngland ; and provision made for it of 'fourpence-halfpenny ' a day.' Vet a giant invincible soul ; a true man's. < )ne remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn-out - ; how the charitable (lentleman ( 'ommoner secretly places a new pair at his door ; and the raw boned 10 Servitor, lifting them, looking at liiem near, with dim eyes, with what thoughts, — pitches them out of window ! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will: but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary ! Rude stubborn self-help here ; a whole world of scjualor, 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 shoes. An original man ; — not a secondhand, borrowing or begging man. Let us stand on our own basis, at any rate ! On such shoes as we ourselves can get. On frost and nmd, if you 20 will, but hf)ncstlv on tiiat; on the rcalitv and substance which Nature gives //>, not on the semblance, on the tiling she has given another than us I iVnd yet with all this rugged ])ride of maniiood and self- help, was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was reallv hij^her than he ? (Ireat 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 \.\\v sincere man was by nature the obedient man ; that only in 30 a World of Heroes was there loyal'Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of orii^iiutlity is not that it be iic-u< : Johnson believed altogether in the old ; he found the old opinions ' H' 11- fourpence lialfi)enny - II' IP H ' \vf)rn out ' 11' 11- W pitrhing ,T\v;iy Til/: llhKO AS MAX Of IJ:ni:KS credible for him, fit for him ; aiul in a ri^ht licroic manner lived under tiicm. He is well wortli study in rt.'L;ard to that. 1 or we are to say that johnNon was far other tiian a mere man of words anil formulas; lie was a man of truths and facts. He stood liy the old formulas: tl)e liipjiier was it for him that he could so stand ; hut in ail formulas that //(• could stand hy. there needed to he a most j;enuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor {'ajier-aLje, so barren, artificial, thick-(]uille(l \\ith Pedantries, Hearsays, the great l-'act of tliis I'niverse glared ' in, forever ' wonder- lo ful, induliitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he harmonised his formulas with it. how he managed at all under sucii circumstances : that is a thin.; worth seein;;. A tiling 't«j be looked at with reverence, with pity, with awe.' i'hat (hurch of St. (lenient Danes, where Johnson still 7i',>rs/i/fe ; nay every true I'roduct of .Nature will inf.il!il)ly i/v//. itself; we may say all artificial things are. at tin; starting of tlii;iii, tnir. What we call ' i''ormuias ' are not in tiieir origin b.id ; they are indispensably good. I'ormula is n'cth^hl, liabitude ; found wherever man is found, formulas fashion them- selves as i'aths do, as beaten Highways, leading towards some sacred or higii object, whitlier many men .ire bent. Consider it. One man, ful! of heartfelt earnest iuipi:' ■ finds-out ^ a way of doingsomewli.it, were it of uttei jC his soul's reverence for tiie Highest, were it but of titiy saluting his fellow-man. .\n inventor was needed to do Id , LI? H n ^ that, ■/•' ■ I,.. has articulated tiie dim-struggling timught ' ' II' H- H- "larcilin forever - II' !!-■ iP tiiul.- <.ut 2US LECTURES ON HEROES f i\ li that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that ; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a • Path.' And now see : the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the cusicst meti. ;d. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with unprovements, with' changes where such seem good ; at all events with enlarge- ments, the Path ever 7t7V<7//>/:,' 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 k itv 10 or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther encl, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being ///// of substance ; you may call them the skin, the articulation into shape, into limbs nnd skin, of a substance that is already there : tiny had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshii)iier's heart. Much 20 as we talk against I'ormulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of true l-ormulas ; that thcv were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this world. Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his 'sincerity." He has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere, — of his being particularly anything ! A hard-struggling, weary- hviarted man, or 'scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live — without stealing! A noble unconsciousness 30 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 appointetl to do great things is, lirst of 1 no! ill 1 1 ' THE l/ENO AS MAX Ol- I.ETT/:h'S IW all, fiirnishcd with that opcnnc-ss to Nature which rondcrs him inc:ipal)lc of i)i;in^' ///sincere ! i'o his lar^'c, open, deep-feel inj; heart Nature is a laci: ai! hearsay is hear- say; tile unspeakable {,nc.aiiess (it this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even thou;^h he stem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to //////, fearful and wonderful, o.i this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity ; unrecoj;nised, because never questioned or capa- ble of question. Mirabe.ui, Mahomet, ( roniwell, Napoleon : all the (;reat Men I ever heard-of ' have this as t le primary lo material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talkin-j; everywhere their commoniilace doc- trines, which they have learned by loi;ic, by rote, at sec- ondhand -': to that kind of man all this is still nothing;, lb- must have truth ; truth which //,• feels to be true. How- shall he stand otherwise .' His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true, (ohnson's way of think- ing about this world is not mine, any more tlian Mahomet's was: but I recognise the everlasting element of heart- ::o siiurrity in both ; and see with pleasure Ikav neitiier of them remains ineffectual. Neither of tliem is as (//,///' sown ; in both of them is something wiiiili the seed-tield will ,;vv/,-i'. Johnson was a Prophet to his people; jireached aClospel to them, -as all like him always do. The highest Oospel he preached we may describe as a kind of Moral I'rudence ; 'in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known,' see how you will ,//- it : A tiling well worth ])reach- ing. 'A world where much is to be clone, and little is to be known : ' do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless 30 abysses of Doubt, of wretched god-forgetting' I nl)eiief; — you were miserable then, powerless, ni ul ; h'nv could vou » H' H- II' heard of - IP .SLcmd-Iiam! 1 ' 1-^ , A li ■' 1 :!ih! 210 /./■:c7'i'h'f-:.s ox iiiiNoi-.s \ do or work at all ? Such (lospol [olinson prciclied and taight ;-- coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great (lospcl, ' ( lear your mind ol (ant ! ' Have no tra with Cant: stand on the cold mud in th. frosty weather, but let it be in your own iwil torn shoes: 'that will bt bjtter for vou,' as Mahomet savs ! I call this, I call these two thinj^s joiiUii to^,tlui\ a great (lospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time. Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and 10 celebrity, are now, as it were,' disowned by the yoimg 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 become obsolete. I lind in Johnson's IJooks the indisputablest traces of ,i great intel- lect and a great heart ; e\'.'r welcome, under what obstruc- tions and perversions soever. They are sin,; ■ • words, those of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram style, —the best he could get to then : a measured grandilo- quence, stejiping or rather stalking along in a very solemn 2D way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a tumid size of phraseology not in proportion to the cf)ntents of it: all this you will put-up- with. I'or the pjiraseoloi^y, tumid or not, has always soimt/iiiii' iK'itliin it. S(j manv beautiful slvUs and books, with not/tin,:; in them ; — a man is a w.//. factor to the world who writes such ! 'J'/irv are the avoidable kind I — Had Johnson left nothing but his /)ii/ii>ii,tr\\, one might have traced there a great intellect, a getiuinc m.m. I-ook ing to its clearness of detinitifiu, its general solidity, honesty, insight and successful method, it may be called the !>est of 30 all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of ar-jliitectural nobleness; it stands there like a great solid stjuare-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete : you judge that a true Builder did it. 1 li' 11= IPweic - U'll- irjmt up rur. II I: NO AS MAX Ol- /./.Jn-.h'S !11 One word, in spite of our haste, must be t;r.inte«l to poor Bozzy. He passes for a mean, intiated.jjluttonoiis creature; and was so in many senses. \ et the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolisli con- ceited .Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaciiinj; in such awestruck attitude tlie <;reat (histy irascible redagof^ue in his mean {garret there : it is a j;enuine reverence for Kxcelience : a 7t.u>rs/iip for Heroes, at a tinie when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain worship lo of them ! We will also take the liberty to deny altoj;ether 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 blauje, but the N'alet's : that his soul, namely, is a mean ;v/(/-soul I He expects his Hero to advance in royal staj^e-trappin^^s, with measured step, trains borne behind hin>, trumi)ets soundin<{ before him. It should stand rather. No man can be a (iriin,/-.\/))Hitrt/itr to his valet-de-chambre. .Strip your Louis (Juatorze of his kin^-f;ear, and there la left nothinij; but a poor forked raddish ' witii a head fantastically carved ; 20 — admirable to no valet. The \'alet does not know a Hero when he sees him ! Alas, no : it requires a kind of J/, > > to do tiiat ; — anfl one of the world's wants, in ////> as in otiier senses, is for most part want of such. (^n the whole, shall we not say, that Jioswell's admiration was well bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all Knj^land so worthy of bendinj; Jiown before ? Sliall we not say, of this j^reat mournful Johnson too, that he f:;uic//, like a rij^ht- valiant - man .' That waste chaos of .\uthorshi]) by trade '' : 30 that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and life-practice : i 1 his ]Joverty, in \n^ dust and MP n= 11'r.vli.h 2 H« H= II' right valiant •' IP IP IP Trade I v| •r ii {e ^i •r 1 212 LKCn'Rl.S ox IllKOES dimness, with the sick body ;ind the rusty co.it : he made it do for him, like \ brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the Kternal ; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have : with his eye set on that, he would rhanye his course for nothinj; in these confused v«)rtices of the lower sea of Time. 'To the Spirit of Lies, bearinj"; death and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag.' Hravc old Samuel : ultitnus Ronuiiiorum .' Ok' Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He 10 is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, excitable, spas- modic man ; at best, intense rather than strong. He had not 'the talent of Silence,' an invaluable talent ; which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in ! The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke ; ' there is no good in emitting sniolu' till you have made it into //"/v, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming ! Rousseau has not deptii or width, not calm force for difficulty ; the first character istic of true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call 20 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 with- out staggering, he is the strong man. \V<,' need forever, especially in these loud-shrieking days, to remind ourselves of that. A man who cannot /lo/ii /ih ptutir, till the time conu- for speaking and acting, is no right man. I'oor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. A higli but narrow contracted intensity in it : bony brows ; deep, strait-s2t eyes, in which there is something bewildered Z° looking, — bewildered, peering with lynx-eagerness. A fact- full of miserv. even isrnoble miserv. and also of the antago- nism against that ; something mean, plebeian there, re deemed only by intciisily : the face of what is calletl a THE rh.RO AS MAX Ol- I ETTEKS 21.) Fanatic, a sadly lontntiUi/ lleio! \\u n.iiiu- hint here because', witli all his dr iwhacks, and thi y arc lu.my, he has the ftrst and chief characteristic dI a Hero: he is heartily in eaiiust. In earnest, if ever man was; as none of these French Phijosophes were. Nay, one would say, of an earnestness nio ^'reat for his otherwise sensitive, rather feeble natine; and which indeed in tii« nA drove him into the stranyest inc(»iierencL ., almost delirations. I'here had come, at last, to be a kind of madness in iiim: his I deas /*MXoilinj( there. Well, look in«o tl" pot ' There is hiilf a p(»un(l o( meat, one carrot and three onions ; th.1t is all; jj(» and tell the whole worUI that, if you like, Monsieur!" A man of this stirt was far ;^one. The whole world j,'ot itself supplied with anecdotes, for light laughter, for a certain theatrical interest, fr«m) these per- versions and contortions of |M)or Jean Jactpies. Alas, to him they were not laughing or tlu;atrical ; too real to him ! 10 The contortions of a dying gladiator: the crowded am|)hi- theatre looks-on ' with entertainment ; but the gladiator is in agonies and dying. .\nd yet this Umisseau, as we -iay, with his passionate apix'als to Mothers, with his Contr,tt-siniii/, with his celebra- tions of Nature, even of savage life in Nature, did once more touch upon Reality, struggle towards Reality; was doing the function of a I'rophet to his Time. As /i. „ould, and as the I'ime cmild ! Strangely through a'.i that deface- ment, degratlation and almost madness, there is in the 20 inmost heart of poor Kousseau a spark of real heavenly tire. \ Once more, out of tin- element i>' hat withered mock ing I'hilosophism, Scepticism and rersillage, there has arisen in this man the ineradical)lc feeling and knowletlgc that this Life of ours is triif : not a Scepticism, I'heorem, or I'ersillage, but a I'act, an awfii! Reality. Nature had made that revelation to him : had ordered liim to speak it out. He got it spoken out ; if not ncll and clearly, then ill and diml\, — as clearly as he could. Nay what are all errors and perversities of his, even those stealings of rib- 30 bons, aimless confused miseries and vagabondisms, if we will interpret them kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement and stagger; igs to ar' iro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, by a path he cannot yet find .' Men are ' H' II' IPloukson rill: III hO AS M.I.X e of him; Ic.ivf hiiii to try yi-l wli.it In- ssill se.ur«. liter.iry t.iUnts. ;;re.itly telel»r;ite(l still .iiiioii^ his eountrymeii, I />,>;///,■; a kind m of rosepink, artitiri.ii i)eili/ iinient. It i- fretjuent, or rather it i-. universal, inioii, the I rem h ^iiui- his time. .Madame de Stael has siimclhin;; of it ; .st. Pierre ; and down onwards to tile present isloiiishin.; eonviilsionary 'Literature of I )esi)erati<»n.' it is everywhere ahund.mt. I h.it s.ime/vMc yi////' is not the riLjlit hue. Look at a Sh.iksjje.ire, at a (loethe, even ,il a W. liter Seoti ! lie who h.is onee seen into this, has seen the diliereme of the True from the .Sham- True, and will iliscrimin.ite them ever aflerw.irds. We had to observe in lolin.soii how nnuliLjood.i i'rophet, -o under all dis.ulv mlaiies .uid «li>or;Mnii,iti(»iis. e.in accom- plish for the world. In Kousseau wi- .ue i.illed to look r.ither at the fearful .imount ol evil ■ ' iili, under siu h dis- orL; inis.ition, ni.iv .uidmp.inv tlu' ;:;iiod. Historically it is a most pre^nanl spectacl--, ihu of Rousse.ui. lianished into Paris ^^arrets, in the ;;Ioomy coininny of his own Thoui^dUs and N—essities there : driven from post to l)il!ar; fretted, exasperated till the heart of him went mad, he had ;xrowii to feel deeply that the world was not his friend nf>r the world's law. It was e.\pedient. if anyway' 3° possible, that such a man should // / hive been set in flat hostilitv with t!u; world. He could be cooped into . garrets, lau;.;hed at as a maniac, left to starve like a wilil-beast- in 1 11" II- ll'anv WHV -• II' II ir wild l>c.ist fl K.i> ^' .\ 2K l.KCTVKl:<; OX IlEROhS his cage; but he could not he hindered from setting the world on lire. I'he French Revolution found its Kvangel- ist in Rousseau. If is semi-delirious speculations on the miseries of civilised life, the prcferahility of the savage to the civilised, and suchlike,' helped wcl! to produce a whole delirium in France generally. Irue, you m.iy 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 ! What he could do with them is 10 unhappily clear enough, ~,i;uillotin,- a great many of them ! Enough row of Rousseau. fr l\ w- It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, secondhand Eighteenth Century, that of a Ifero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard figures and productions, in the guise of a Robert iiurns. Eike a little well in the rocky desert places, — like a sudden splendour of Heaven in the artificial Vauxhall ! I'eojjle knew not what to make of it. They took it for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work ; alas, it /<•/ itself be so taken, though struggling half- 20 blindly, as in bitterness of death, against that ! Perhaps no man had such a false reception from his fellow-men. Once more a very wasteful life-drama was enacted under the sun. 'i'he tragedy of liurns's life is known to all of you. Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held and ])lace merited constitute perverseness of lot for a man lo lot could be more perverse than Ikirns's. Among those secondhand acting-figures, fnimcs for most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a giant Original Man ; one 3" of those men who reacii down to the i erennial iJeeps, who take rank with the Heroic among men: and he was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. ['he largest soul of all the British 1 IP \V IP such like rilK IIKKO AS MAX (>/■■ LETT/IRS lYl -■;« lands c.iine among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scot- tish I'easant.' His I'atiier, a poor toilinjf man, tried various things; did not succeetl in any ; was involved in continual difficulties, 'i'he Stewartl, lactor as the Scotch call him, used to send letters and threatenings, Uurns says, 'wiiich threw us all into tears.' Ihe brave, hard-toiling, hard-suffering Father, his brave heroine of a wife ; and those children, of whom Robert was one! In this Karih, so wide otherwise, no shelter for ///,;;/. The letters ' threw us all into tears : ' tigure lo it. i'he brave Father, I sav alwavs; — a sihiit Hero and Poet ; without whom the son had never been a speaking one ! liurns's Schoolmaster caine afterwards to London, learnt what good society was ; but declares that in no meeting of men did he ever enjoy better disccnuse than at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor 'seven acres of nursery-ground,' — not ^ that,- nor the miserable patch of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a living by, would pr(jsper with him ; he had a sore unecjual battle all his days. Hut he stood to it valiantly ; a wise, faithful, uncon- 20 (juerable man ; - swallowing-down ' how many sore suffer- ings daily into silence ; lighting like an unseen Hero, — nobody publishing newspaper paragraphs* about his noble- ness ; voting pieces of plate to him ! However, he was not lost : nothing is lost. Robert is there ; the outcome of him, -and indeed of many generations of such as him. This Uurns appeared under every disadvantage: unin- structed, poor, born only to hard manual toil ; and writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dialect, known only to a small province of tiie country he lived in. Had 30 he written, even what he did write, in the general language of England, 1 doubt not he had already become universally ^ m> /•iira;^raf'h in H' IP IP "'■^„ot h, 11' •' IP IP IP swallowing flown * II' IP IP ncwspaiK'r-paiagraphs Pi f-\ H 'V li ii 21S LECTURES OX HEROES recognised as bein^, 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 continuing 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 10 was an Ayrshire Peasant named Robert liurns. Yes, 1 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 impetuous whirlwind of passion and faculty slumbered quiet there ; such heavenly melody dwelling in the heart of it. ^ A noble rough genuineness ; homely, rustic, hunest ; true simplicity of strength ; with its lightning-fire, with its soft dewy pity; — like the old \orse Thor, the Peasant- god!— 20 Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of tlu ir hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart ; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in tlie bog, or suchlike,' than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth {'fond g,Ti//an/,' as old Marquis Mira- beau calls it), a primal-element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Ikirns. A larse fund 30 of Hope dwells in him ; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them. It is as the lion shaking 'dew-drops from his mane;' as the swift UI' IF I P. such like THE HERO AS MAX ()/■ LETTERS 219 \ bounding horse, that laughs at the shaking of the spear. ~ But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort like Rurns'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 Hums 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 ,iiJ under such obstructions, are only a poor fragment of him. Pro- fessor Stewart remarked very justly, what indeed is true lo of ai; Poets good for m.uoh, that his poetry was nut any particular faculty ; but the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind expres„.ng 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 gracefulest ^ utterances of courtesy, to the highest tire of passionate speech ; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight ; all was in him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose speech 'led them off their feet.' This is beautiful: but 20 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 li oed, and come crowd- ing to hear this man speak ! Waiters and ostlers : — they too were men, and here was a man ! I have heard mucii about his speech ; but one of the best things I ever heard of it was, last year, from a venerable gentleman long famil- iar 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 earl) 30 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 other- ' H' gracefullest ^ A .m 220 LECTURES OX HEROES I ?l I wise ! — But if we look at his general force of soul, his healthy robustness everyway, the rugj^ed downrightness, penetration, generous valour and manfulness that was in him, — where shall we readily tind a better-gifted man ? Among the great men of the Kighteenth Century, I some- times feel as if Hums might be found to resemble Mirabeau more than any other. They differ widely in vesture; yet look at them intrinsically. I'here is the same burly thick- necked ' strength of body as of soul ; — built, in both cases, to on what the old Marquis calls a fond i^aillard. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster ; a noisy, forward, unresting man. But the characteristic of Mirabeau too is veracity and sense, power of true insii^/if, superiority of vision. Th' 'ling that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of iiisight into some object or other: so do both these men speak. The same raging passions ; ca]Dable too in both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest noble affections. Wit, wild laughter, energy, directness, sincerity : these were in botii. 20 The types of the two men are not dissimilar. Burns too could have governed, debated in National Assemblies ; politicised, as few could. Alas, the courage which had to exhibit itself in capture of smuggling schooners in the Sol- way Frith ; in keeping si/auc over so much, where no good speech, but only inarticulate rage was possible: this miglit have bellowed forth Tshers de Brezc and the like ; and made itself visible to all men, in managing of kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable epochs ! But they said to him reprovingly, his ( )fficial Superiors said, and wrote : ' V'ou 30 are to work, not think.' (^f your ///////7//i,'--faculty, the great- est in this land, we have no need ; you are to gauge beer there ; for that only are yon wanted. Very notable ; — and worth mentioning, though we know what is to be said and 1 H' IP W thicknecked niJ: m.HO AS MAX Oi' /./ ///AS 221 answered ! As if Thouyht, I'ower of Jliinkin- were not, at .all times, in all places and situations of tlit- world, jiro- cisely the thing that 7.',/.- wanted. j-he f;,t;il man, is he not always the ////thinkinjj man, the man who cannot think and sec; but only <,'ro])e, and iKiilucinate. aid y/z/vsee tlu- nature of the thing he works with ? He missecs it, and mxsf.drs it as we say ; takes it for one thing, ;tnd it />• anotlier thing, and leaves him standing like a Futility there ! He is 'the fatal man; unutterably fatal, put in the high places of men. ~ " Why ' complain of this .' " • say some : - Strength - is mourn- m fully denied its arena ; that was true from of old." - ! )ouIh less ; and the worse for the iin-nu, answer ' I ! Comf^lainint^ profits little; stating of the truth may |)roftt. That a Kurope, with its French Revolution just breaking out, finds no need of a Hums e.xcept for gauging beer, -is a thing I, for one, cannot n-joUc at ! Once more we nave to say here, that the chief .juality of liurns is the sincerity of him. So in his Poetry, so' in his Life. The Song he sings is not of fan'asticalities ; it is of a thing felt, really there; the prime merit of this, .is of all jo in him, and of his Life generally,, is truth. i'he I,ife of Hums is what we may call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage sincerity, not cruel, far from that'; but wild, wrestling naked with the truth of things. In that sense, there is something of the savage in all great men. Hero-worship, — Odin, Hums? Well: these NFen of I-etters too were not without a kind of Hero worship : but what a strange condition has that got into now 1 The wait- ers and ostlersof Scotch inns, prying about tiie door, eager to catch any word that fell from Hums, were doing uncon- ;,'■ scions reverence to the Heroic. Johnson had his Hoswell for worshipper. Rousseau had worshippers enough : princes ■■ k Hi f ' ' Quotation nutrk-s ii, t in W \\- 2 ^ Quotation maris not in II' IF MI' .say * not in IV 222 LKC TURKS ON HEROES I 11 ir ,1 calling on him in his mean garret; the great, the beautiful doing reverence to the poor moonstruck 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 music for his own living. He cannot even get his music copied. " IJy dint of dining out," says he, " I run 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 10 vital wellbeing or illbeing to a generation, can we say that //icu- 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 /ids 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 sunshine,' or as unblessed black thunder and tor- n.ado, — with unspeakable difference of profit for the world! The manner of it is very alterable ; the matter and fact of" 2o it is not alterable 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 //./we or welcome we give him or it, is a point that concerns our- selves mainly. //, the new Truth, new deeper revealing of the Secret of this I'niverse, is verily of the nature of a mes- sage from on high ; and must and will have itself obeyed. - JO My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's history," -his'' visit to Fdinburgh. Often it seems to me as if his demeanour there were the highest proof he gave of 1 II' IP IP summer-sunshine - - II' Il^o^ it not; by ' ' II' history his THE HERO AS MAX OE LETTEKS 223 what a fund of worth and genuine manhood was in him. Ff we think of it, few heavier burdens could be laid on the strength of a man. So sudden ; all common Lionism, which ruins innumerable i..en, was as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had been made a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artillery Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fere. IJurns, 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 lo from him : next month he is in the blaze of rank and beauty, handing down jewelled Duchesses to dinner; the cynosure 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 admire much the way in which Hums met all this. Perhaps no man one could point out, was ever .so sorely tried, and so little forgot him- self. Tranquil, unastonished ; not abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness nor affectation : he feels that /if there is the man Robert IKirns : that the 'rank is but the guinea- 20 stamp;' that the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will show ' 7i'//(7/ man, not in the least make him a better or other man ! Alas, it may readily, unless lie look to it, make him a icorse man ; a wretched inflated windbag, — inflated till he /'itrst, and become a titui/ lion ; for whom, as some one has said, 'there is no resurrection of the body ; ' worse *han a living dog ! — Hums is admirable here. And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these Lion- hunters were the ruin and death of liurns. It was they that rendered it impossible for him to live ! They gathered 30 round him in his Farm ; hindered his industry ; no place was remote enough from them. He could not get his Lionism forgotten, honestly as he was disposed to do so. 1 II' n- IP shew ) *■ I 224 LECTLkliS OX JiE'^OKS He falls into discontents, into niiscries, faults; the world getting ever more desolate for him ; health -t^-racter, peace of mind all gone ;— solitary enough It is t!;i','ical to think of ! These men came but to .,, .nm ; it was out of no sympathy with him, nor no hatred to him. 1 Ijey came to get a little amusement : they got their amusement ; - and the Hero's life went for it ! Richter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a kind of M.ight-chafers,' large Fire-Hies, which people stick upon 10 spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. I'ers(jns of con- dition can thus travel with a ple.asant radiance, which the\ much admire. Great honour to the Fire-flies. But ! — !^- LECTITRK VI THF. IlKKd AS KING. ( KOMWKI.I., XAI'OI.KON : MODERN HKVOl.tTIONlSM [Friday, 22( .lay 1840.] ' Wk 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 welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of C.reat 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, embodies itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour what we 10 are to do. He is called Rex, Regulator, Jioi . our own name is still better ; King, Konning, which means Ciin-n'mg, Able-man. Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, ques- tionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, present them- selves here : on the most of which we must resolutely for the present forbear to speak at all. As Hurke said that perhaps fair Trial by Jury was the soul of (lovernment, and that all legislation, administration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of it, went on, in order ' to bring twelve impar- 20 tial men into a jury-box;' — so, by much stronger reason, may I say here, that the finding of your Ableman and » ir IP \V date abmje title. 225 I 't it •f »l 226 t.ECTUKKS ON UEKOES 1 tl getting him invested with the symMs of ,i/>i/ity, with dignity, worship (TiwM-ship), royalty, kinghood, or whatever wo call it, so that /le may actually have room to guide accord- ing 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 el.^c nothing. Kind in any country the Ablest Man that exists theie ; raise /lim to the supreme place, and loyally reverence 'o 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 perfect state ; an ideal country. The Ablest Man ; he means also the truest-hearted, justest, the Noblest Man : what he hi/s us h do must be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere or anyhow learn ; — the thing which it will in all ways behove us, with right loyal thankfulness, and nothing doubting, to do ! Our doini; and life were then, so far as government could regulate it, 20 well regulated ; that w.rc the ideal of constituiions. Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be com- pletely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie a very great way off; and we will right thankfully content our- selves with any not intolerable approximation thereto ! Lei 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 ; wc will esteem him a sickly, discontented, foolish man. And yet, on the other hand, it is never to be forgotten that 3° Ideals do exist ; that if they be not approximated to at all, the whole matter goes to wreck ! Infallibly. No bricklayer builds a vitlW perfectly perpendicular, mathemati- cally this is not possible ; a certain degree of perpendicular- ity suffices him ; and he, like a good bricklayer, who must THE HERO AS KING HI have dnne with his job, leaves it so. And yet if he sway /oo muth from the iwrpendicular ; above all, If he throw plummet and level quite away from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it comes to hand — I Such brick- layer, I think, is in a bud way. J/e has forgotten himself: but the Law of Gravitation does not forget to act on him ; he and his wall rush-down ' into confused welter of niin ! - This is the history of all rebellions, l-rench Revolutions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. \om have mt the too 6'>rable Man at the head of adairs ! The too ignoble, lo 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 unadministered, fermenting into unmeasured masses of failure, of indigent misery: in the outward, and in the inward or spiritual, miserable millions stretch-out'' the hand for their due supply, anu ?t is not there. The * law of gravitation ' acts ; Nature's -o 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 unread now in the Public Libraries of this country. Far h". it from us to disturb the ca'-n process by which it is disapi)ear- ing harmlessly from the earth, in those repositories ! .\t the same time, not to let the immense rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some soul of it behind — I will say 3° that it did mean something; something true, which it is important for us and all men to keep in mind. To asst-rt 1 IP H» IP rush down * H' H' H' stretch out 8 W W W burst forth i^. !».( m ■HlflBI III 1 I 228 th Liicn'A'/-:s ox ///i/fOA.s n whatever man you chose to lay hold of ( hy thin or other plan of clutching at him); and clapt a round ,)iece of metal on the head of, and called King, there straightway came to reside a divine virtue, so that /„■ became a kind of god, and a Divinity 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 F.ibraries > Milt I will say withal, and that is what these Divine-right men meant, That in Kin-., and in all human Authorities, ro and relations that men godcrcatcd can form amon- «ich other, there is verily either a Divine Right or else a Di"aholic Wrong; one or the other of these two! For it is false altogether, what the last Sceptical ( entury taught us, that this world is a steam-engine. There is a (lod in this world .ind a (lod's-sanction, or else the violation of such, does look-out ' from all ruling and obedience, from all moral acts of men. I'here is no act more moral between men than that of rule and obedience. Woe to him that claims obedi cnce when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when 20 ,t is! (lod's law is in that. I .say, h..v^ever the I'archment- biws may run : there is a Divine R.g,.t or else a Diaboli- Wrong at the heart of every claim that one man makes upon another. It can do none of us harm to reflect cm this: in all the relations of life it will concern us ; in f.ovaltyand Royalty the highest of these. I esteem the moelern error, That all goes by self-int^-rest and the checking; and balancing <.( greedy knaveries, and that, in short, there is nothing divine whatever in the association of men, a still more despicable 30 error, natural as it is to an unbelieving century, than that of a 'divine right ' in people nM,/ Kings. I say, Find me the true AV;/////,/.^ King, r Able-man. and he Jinx a divine right over nie. That we knew in some tolerable measure ' W IIMP lookout Till-: rth.No AS kim: 22^) how to linil him, and th.il all men were ready to acknowl- edge his divine 'ight \»iien found: this is precisely the healinjj which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, seeking after! t'I'he true Kin-^, as ;;iiide ol the |)ractical, has e\er something of the I'ontitT in him, guitie of the spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. This too is a true saying, That the A'/m^' is head tif the C'/n/n//. Itut we will leave the Polemic stulT of a iiead century to lie (|uiet on its bookshelves. Certainly it is a fearful business, thai of having your lo Able-man to .uri', and not knowing in what manner to pro- ceed about it ! That is the world's sad predicament in these times of ours. They are times of revolution, and have long been. The bricklayer with his bricks, no longer heedful of plununet or the law of {gravitation, have toppled, tumbled, and it all welters as we see! Ihit the beginning of it was not the I'rench Revolution ; that is rather the (•//,/, we can hope. It were truer to say, the ih-i^iiiuim; was three centuries farther back: in the Reformation of Luther. That the thing which still called itself Christian Church had 20 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 //('/ now do : here lay the vital malady. The inward being wrong, all outward went ever more and more wrong. lielief died away; all was Doubt, Disbelief. The buildjr ui^t (iv his j)lummet ; said to himself, " What is gravitation .' IJrick lies on brick there ! " Alas, does it not still sound strange to many of us, the assertion that there /'.< a (lod's- truth in the business of god-created men; that all is not a 30 kind of grimace, an 'expediency,' diplomacy, one knows not what ! — From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, " ^'ou, i ? 230 LECTURES OX HEROES 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, '' Anx armes!" when the people had burst-up^ against a// manner of Chimeras, — I find a natural historical sequence. That shout too, so frightful, half-infernal, was a gr at matter. Once more the voice of awakened nations ; — starting con- fusedly, as out of nightmare, as out of death-sleep, into 10 some dim feeling that Life was real ; that God's-world was not an expediency and diplomacy ! Infernal ; — yes, since they would not have it otherwise. Infernal, since not celestial or terrestrial ! Hollowness, 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 hellfire, since they would not but have it so ! — A common theory among considerable parties of men in 20 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 con- version of France and large sections of the world into a kind of Bedlam. The Event had risen and raged ; but was a madness and nonentity, — gone now happily into the region of Dreams and the Picturesque ! — To such comfortable 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 30 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 » H' are a » H' H* H' burst up THE I/JIKO AS KIXC 231 it be not made good ! To philosophers who had made-up » their life-system on that ' madness ' quietus,- no phenome- non could be more alarming. Poor Niebuhr, they say, the Prussir;, i'-r.fc..sor and Historian, fell broken-hearted in conse luence : sinki.njd, if we can believe it, and died of the Threv l\iys ' !t vas surely not a very heroic death ; — little b ..• ili.ri kacine'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 ic axis after even them! The Three Days told all mortals that the old French Revolution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory ebullition of liedlam, but a genuine prod- uct of this Earth where we all live; that it was verily a Fact, and that the world in general would do well every- where to regard it as such. 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 otherwise all of ba.seless sea and 2c waves. A true Apocalypse, though a terrible one, to this false withered artificial time; testifying once more that Nature is //r/^matural ; if not divine, then diabolic: that Semblance is not Reality ; that it has to become Reality, or the world will take-tire " under it, — burn // into what it is, namely Nothing ! Plausibility has ended ; empty Routine has ended ; much has ended. I'his, as with a Trump of Doom, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the wisest who will learn it soonest. Long confused genera- tions before it be learned ; peace impossible till it be ! The 30 earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a world of incon- sistencies, can await patiently, patiently strive to do his ' IP W^W made up 2 IP ip madness-quietus * H' II' H^ take fire • % .n . ! t I m II icfsi ir It i a Ui 232 LECTURES OK HEROES work, in th*^ midst of that. Sentence of Death is written down in Heaven against all that ; sentence of Death is now proclaimed 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 Ue there, and how fast, fearfully fast, in all countries, the inexorable demand for solution of them is pressing on, — he may easily find other work to do than labouring in the Sansculottic province at this time of day ! 10 To me, in these circumstances, that of ' Hero-worship becomes a fact inexpressibly precious ; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlast- ing hope in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent us ; our faculty, our necessity, to rever- ence Heroes when sent : it shines like a polestar» through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and confi i^ration. 20 Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to those workers and fighters in the French Revolution. Not rever- ence for Great Men ; not any hope- or belief, 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 altogether, 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 30 would suffice. It was a natural faith then and there. "Liberty and Equality; no Authority needed any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for such Authorities, has proved 1 n- H* IP pole-star * h« IP H' hope, « H' IP 11' give up r/iF. nr.Ro as a/xg [ 233 \ I filse, is itself a falsehofxl ; no more of it! We have had such fori^crii-s, we will now trust nothing'. So many base plated coins passin-^ in the market, the belief has now become common that no gokX 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 altogether ; - the product of entire sceptical blindness, as yet only strug- lo gling to see. Hero-worship exists forever, and everywhere : not Loyalty alone; it extends from divine adoration down to the lowest practical regions of life. ' lending before men,' if it is not to be a mere empty grimace, better dis- pensed with than practised, is Hero-worship, — a recogni- tion that there does dwell in that presence of our brother something divine; that every created man. as Xovalis said, is a 'revelation in the Flesh.' They were Poets too, that devised all those graceful courtesies which make life nol-' Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace; it need 20 no, ch. And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, are still ,.^.-,ii)le; nay still inevitable. May we not say, moreover, while so many of our late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, that nevertheless every (Jreat ^Lln, 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 anar .^ does encumber him at every step, - him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, hateful. His mission is 30 Order; every man's is. He is here to make what was dis- orderly, 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 1 The carpenter finds rough trees; :! V : 234 LECTUKES OX HENOES \A shapes them, constrains them into s(iuare fitness, mto pui- pose and use. We are all born enemies oi 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 bansculot- tisms, do and must work towards Order. I say, there is not a man in them, raying in the thickest of the madness, but is impelled withal, at all moments, towards Order. 10 His very life means that; Disorder is dissolution, death. No chaos but •:. seeks a centre to revolve round. While man is man, some Cromwell or Napoleon is the necessary finish of a Sansculottism.- 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. 1 )ivine right, take it on the great scale, is found to mean divine mi^^ht withal ! While old false Formulas are getting trampled everywhere into destruction, new genuine Substances unexpectedly 20 unfold themselves indestructible. In rebellious ages, when Kin-ship itself seems dead and abolished, C^romwell, Napo- leon'step-forth - again as Kings. The history of these men is what we have now to look at, as our last phasis of Hero- ism The old ages are brought back to us ; the manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself tirst took rise, is again exhibited in the history of these Two. We have had many civil-wars in Fngland ; wars of Red and White Roses, wars of Simon de Montfort ; wars enough, which are no , very memorable. Hut that war of the Pun- 30 tans 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 UIMIMP come out MP IF IP step forth Till-: lll:RO AS A'/XC Ji.^ ^:i section uiicu more of that -ic.u uiiivcrsal war whicli alone niakes-up' the true History of tlie World, —the war of ISelief acjainst Unbelief! Ihe stru^^'Me of the real essence o f tl im; blances and forms of tl men intent on ;s. aj,Minst men intent on the sein- nm I'iie I'uritans, ti ) manv, seem me re savage Iconoclasts, tierce de .trovers (;f Forms- 1 )iit 10 It were more just to call them haters of un/ru^ Forms. I hope we know how t(. respect Laud and his Kin^r as well as them. I'oor Laud seems to me to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest ; an unfortunate Pedant rather than anythinjr worse. His 'Dreams' and superstitions, at which they lau-h so, have an atfectionate, lovable- kind of character. He is like a ( ollei^e-Tutor, whose whole world is forms, ( 'ollege-rules ; whose n(jtion is that these are the life and safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that unalterable luckless notion of his, at the iiead not of a Col- lege but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex deep- reaching interests of men. He thinks they oug' t to go by the old decent regulations; nay that their salvation will lie in extending and improving these. Like a weak man, 30 he drives with spasmodic vehemence towards iiis purpose; cramps himself to it, heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity : He will have his College-rules obeyed by his Col- legians; that first; and till tliat, nothing. He is an ill- starred I'edant, as [ said. He would have it tlie world was a College of that kind, and the world 7k-;« itself zo into utterance at all, and preferred formless silence to any utterance there possible, - what should we say of a man comin<- forward to represent or utter it tor you in the way of uphoistercr-mummery ^ Such a man, — let him depart swiftlv, if he love himself ! Vou have lost your only son ; are mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate man importunUely oJers to celebrate Funeral (iames for him in the manner of the Creeks ! Such mummery is not onlv not to be accepted,' - it ' is hateful, unendurable. It is what the old Prophets called ' Idolatry,' worshipping of 30 hollow slum's ' : what all earnest men do and will reject. W e can partlv understand what those poor Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St. Catherine C'reed's Church, in the manner we have it described ; with his multiplied ceremo- 1 I 1 P HMP accepted ; it ^ H» H^ shews Till: lll-Rl) AS K/\i; nial bowinj^s, j^e.sticul.xtio!i>., i-\t:!,iin uiuii> ; Miiciy ii i^ r.uliur the- rij^orous formal /',./. t/i\ intriit i.n !i!> • ( Diit-f-ru'cs,' than the earnest I'rophet, imeiit -mi tlie essence of the matter ! Turitanism found sih/i forms iMsiii)portal)le ; tr.impled on such forms; -we have to e\cu>.e it for savin-. No form ai all rather tiian sucli ! It stood preatliin- in it> hare pulpit, with nothini,' but the ilihle in its iiand. Nav, a man preaching from his earnest .»,//// into tiie earnest s.'u.'s of men: is not this virtually tlie essence of all ( luirclio w hat- soever ? 'I'he nakedest, savaj;esl reality, 1 say. i^ pnfer- able to any semblance, howewr diijnirud. Ilesidcs. it will clothe itself with for him : he w ill lind himself clothes. Hut the suit-of-clothes pretend in- that .7 i-, both clothes and man — ! — We cannot • li-ht tin- I'rinih' by three-hundred-thousand' n;(l uniforms: tlu-re mu^t be m,/i in the inside of them \ Semblance, I assert, nmsi actually w/ divorce itself from Reality. If Semblance do, why then there must be men found to rebel aL:;ainst Semblance. for it has become a lie! i'hese two Antaironism^ at w.ir here, in the case of Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. 'I'hey went to tierce battle over Kn-land in that age ; and fought-out - their confused controversy to a certain length, with many results for all of us. I f i i In the age which directly followed that of the Puritans, their cause or themselves were little likely to h.ive justice done them. Charles Second and his Kochesiers were not the kind of men you would set to judge what the worth or 3c meaning of such men might havi^ been. Th-t tbere could be any faith or truth in the life of a man. was what these . « m ' tV IV IV three hundred thousand - H' H- U" f.ught out 2iS i.i:cTiurt>if-' i turning all that noble strug- gle for constitutional Liberty into a .sorry farce played for 1 IP 11= IP ushered in ■' H' IF lluuhesdi ■i \V IPcanoni/.ecl ' :i"l >" H' ■■' IP II- f\.,lu(U- THE IIEHO AS hl.W: 2,V> his own benefit : this and worse is the character they };ive of Cromwell. And then there come contrasts with Wash- ington and others ; above all, with these noble i'yius and Hampdens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and ruined into a fiitilitv and deformity. This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural product of a century like the Ki^hteenth. '. As we said of the V.ile;. so of the Sceptic: He does not know a Hero when he sees him ! The X'alet expected puri)le mantles, yilt sceptres, body {guards and flourishes of trumpets : the «o Sceptic of the Kijjhteenth century looks for regulated respectable Formulas, ' Principles,' or what else he may call them ; a style of sjieech and conduct which has got to seem ' respectable,' which can jilead for itself in a hand- some articulate manner, and gain the suffrages of an en- lightened sceptical Kighteenth century! It is, at bottom, the same thing that both the Valet and he expect: the garnitures of some tukiunvlcii^iJ royalty, which t/icn they will acknowledge ! i'he King coming to them in the rugged ////formulistic state shall be no King. 20 For my own share, far be it from me to say or insinuate a word of disparagement against such characters as Hamp- den, Fliot, I'ym ; whom I believe to have been right worthy and h-^eful men. i have read diligently what books and documents about them I could come at ;- with the honest- est wish to admire, to love and worship them like Heroes; but I am sorry to say, if tiie real truth must be told, with very indifferent success ! At bottom, I found tliat it would not do. They are very noble men, these ; step along in their stately way, with their measured euphemisms,' philos- 30 ophies, parliamentary eloquences. Ship-moneys,'^ J/wwrr^/Vj i]f Man: a most constitutional, unblamable," dignified set of ■5. if » H' II* H' euphui H' M" Sliinnionies II' II- unhlanie.'iMc • i 240 LECTURES OiW HEROES men. But the heart remains cold before then); the fancy alone endeavours to yet-up' some wcirsliij) of them. What man's heart does, in reality, break-forth * into any lire of brotherly love for these men ? ihey are become dread- fully dull men! One breaks-down' often enoujjh in the constitutional eloquence (jf the admirable I'ym, with his •seventhly and lastly.' N'ou find that it may be the admi- lablest thing in the world, but that it is heavy, -heavy as lead, barren as brick-clay ^ that, in a word, for you there 10 is little or nothing; now survivinj; there! One leaves all these Nobilities standinj; in their niches of honour: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man of then) all in whom one still finds human stutT. The great savage lUuc- sark : he could write no euphemistic' Momuihy of Man ; did not speak, did not work with glib regularity; had no straight story to tell for himself anywhere, liut he stood i;are, not cased in euphe)nistic " coat-of-mail ; he grajiplcd like a giant, face to face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things ! That, after all, is the sort of nian for 20 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 tolerance of the Eighteenth century for the other happier Puritans seon to be a very great matter. One might say, it is but a piece of Formulism and Scepticism, like the rest. They tell us, It was a sorrowful thing to consider that the foun- 30 dation of our English Liberties should have been laid by 'Superstition.' These Puritans came forward with t'alvin- I H' H* H^ get up ■-• H' H' IP break forth » H' H» IP breaks down < II' 11= llM)rick day 6 IP IP IPeuphuistic « H' IP H^ euphuistic 77//; HERO AS KIXG 241 istir incredible Creeds .Anti-Laudisms, Westminster r un fessions ; demanding. chieHy of all, that they should hive liberty to ivonhip in their own way. Liberty to Uix them- selves : that was the thing they should have demanded ! It was SuiH-Tstition, Fanaticism, disgraceful ignorance of Con- stitutional Philosophy to insist on the other thing ! - Liberty to tax oneself? Not to pay-out 'money from your pocket except on reason shonn-? No century, I think, but a rather barren one woulu have fixed on that as the first right of man ! I should say, on the contrary, A just n>an will lo generally have I)etler cause than motuy in what shape soever, before deciding to revolt against his (lovernment. Ours is a most confused world ; in which a good man will be thankful to see any kind of (Jovernment maintain itself in a not insupportable manner: and here in Kngland, to this hour, if he is not ready to pay a great many taxes which //(• can see very small reason in, it will not go well with him, J think! He must try some other climate than this. Taxgatherer .> Money.' Fie will say : "Take my money, since you fan, and it is so desirable to you ; take zo it, — and take yourself away with it; and leave me alone to my work here. / am still here ; can still work, after all th'j money you have taken from me ! " lUit if they come to iiim, and say, " Acknowledge a Lie ; pretend to say you are worshipping (lod, when you are not doing it : believe not the thing that yon find true, but the thing that I find, or pretend to find true!" He will answer : "No; by Clod's help, no''! You may take my purse; but 1 cannot have my moral Self annihilated. The pursers any Highway- man's who might meet me with a loaded pistol : but the ,3c Self is mine and God my Maker's; it is not yours; and I will resist you to the death, and revolt aira agr you, and, on » II' IF IP pay out » H' H» H' shewn » IP \o « H< cash i ^ . £U l.HCIl'NIS iK\ III SOI. S M 'V\ I ill HI! the whole, front all iminniT of extremities, accusations and confusi«)ns, in defence of that ! " Really, it seems to ine the one reas«)n which could justify revolting;, this of the I'uritans. It has been the soul of ail jijst revolt', amonjj men. Not //w«i,'<' alone produced even the l-'rench Kevolution ; no, but the feelini,' of the insu)- portable all-i>ervadin;; /;?/>,//,»,',/ which had now endxuliiil itself in nunj,'er, in universal material Scaicity and Non- entity, and thereby become i>ii/is/^itt,tMy false in the eyes lo of all'l We will leave the Ki^hteenth century with its 'lib- erty to tax itself.' We will not astonish ourselves that the meaninjj of such men as the I'uritans remained dim to it. To men who believe in no reality at all, how shall a ir,il human soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the Voice of this world's Maker still sjjeakin;,' to w.f, - be in- telligible? What it cannot reduce into < onstitulional doc- trines relative to 'taxing,' or other iIk- like material inter- est, gross, palpable tf) the sense, such a century will needs reject as an amori^hous heap ot rubbish. Ilampdeiis, I'yms 20 and Ship-numey will be the theme ot much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid ; which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as i,y does: and the irreducible ( rom- well will remain a chaotic ni.iss of 'madness," ' hypocrisy,' - and much else. From of old, I will confess, this theory of Cromwell'^ falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot believe the like, of any (Ireat Man wiiatever. Multitudes ot (i«Mt Men figure in History as false seltish men ; but if we •ill consider it. they arc but /;'//^« for us, unintelligible 30 shadows; we do not see into them as men that could have existed at all. .\ superficial unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the surfaces and semblances of things, could form such notions of (Ireat Men. fan a great .soul II' 11= II' 'M.11I1U - 11' IF ir -llyiJucrisy' I llh III Ai> \ AlXi, l\\ )c I )o.ssi Ml- witlnHit .1 ii'iisiiii,!' in it, tin* t-sscncc of all rni/ souls, >;riMt or mhiII ' N", wt- cannot hgiire i'mmwell ns ;i F'llsity :\n«l Kntiiily ; tlu- longer I study him and his career. I lu-lifvi- this the iis«.. Why should we ? There is nn evidenre of it. Is it nut str.uim' that, after all the int»imt lins of eahimny this mm his heen snbtert tn. after beiif^ represented as the very prinre of liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke tnilli, l)tit always some ctinnin'^ mun- terfeit of truth, there should not yi-t have hocn one false- liof>d broiijfht clearly lH>me to him ?■ A prince of li.irs, and lo no lie spoken by him. Not one that I eould yet ^el sij^ht of. It is like I'oeoeke askin;^ (Irotiu^. Where is your /■/-''y' of Mahomet's l'i;4eon .' No proof I I.et us leave all these calumnious chimeras, as chimeras oii;^lit to he left. They are not portraits of the man ; they are distracted jihantasms of liim, the joint product of hatred ami darkness. |,ookiii4 at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems to me. a very dillcrenl hvpothesis sn;;;;ests itself. What little we know of his earlier oliscure years, distorted as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an eirnest, atfet- 20 tionate.' situert; kind of mm? His nervous melancholic temper.iUK nt intlic.Ues r.ither a seriousness l'i> deei) for him. ( )f ■' those stories ot '.Spectres'; of the white Spectre 1 II' il' iiuarty. -'-11' ^'<)u rL-niuniliiT that story of lii> h.ivint; ;i visii.n of tin- Kvil .S|iiiit, |)rLilii \w<^ that lu- woulil Ix- SovcrclL;!) of Ijifjl.ind. ;iiioiiu: huge wliiti- Spo trr. wliii h lie took to he tlic lli\il. with pittLTii itur.il inoiiiiioiis of >omi' >oit.,lH'\vs it-rlf tn liim ; tlie Koyali-'t^ 111. uK iininrn-'' K.ihKk- ahoiit it; hut ai)itrl from tli>ir >])t 1 illa- tions, \V' , ,111 si.piM.^t.- this story f'f the Sptttrf to Kf true. Thin there are afterwards tho-t hjpoLhondriai al vi>ion- : th.e lioUnrstnt for: ( )livir imaf;inin{; iIm! •• t!i" -tieple of I luntint,'(hin was about to tumlilt- on him." i- 'Kivin-? a \isi.>i li' V. :L-iii;-m")rr irfdi( tini; that he would lie Sovereign ' that Id U f hi- onu- Spirit, lylinht, white Spiitre. which he took to he tln' Divil, with priter- .f i:i i^laiK 1. In th.- I- hroa( 'i :' I *i i\ ! , 1' ii.itui.il munition.-, of some sort, shews it.'-rlf to him: it a umversa 244 LECTURES ON HEROES in broad daylight, predicting that he should be King of England, we are not bound to believe much ; — probably no more than of the other black Spectre, or Devil in person, to whom the Officer saw him sell himself before Worces- ter Fight ! But the mournful, over-sensitive, hypochondriac humour of Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indispu- tably known. The Huntingdon Physician told Sir Philip Warwick himself, He had often been sent for at midnight ; Mr. Cromwell was full of hypochondria, thought himself 10 near dying, and "had fancies about the Town-cross." These' things are significant.- Such an excitable deep- feeling nature, in that rugged stubborn strength -' of his,' is not the symptom of falsehood ; it is the symptom and promise of quite other than falsehood ^ ! The young Oliver is sent to study Law ; falls, or * is said to have fallen,* for a little period, into some of the dissipa- tions of youth; but if' so,' speedily repents, abandons all this : not much above twenty, he is married, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. ' He " pays-back ' what 20 money he had won at gambling,'* says* the story";— he does not think any gain of that kind could be really his. It is very interesting, very natural, this 'conversion,' as they well name it ; this awakening of a great true soul from the wordly slough, to see into the awful truth of things ; — to see that Time and its shows '■' all rested on Eternity, and story of those times ; and, apart from all Royalist ami other speculations on it, we can well suppose this story of the Spectre to bo true. Then there are afterwards those other hypochondriacal visions : the Doctor sent for; Oliver 'has fancies about the town-cross of Huntingdon.' 1 11^ The '' '' no marks of quotation in W IP 2 II' bulk " IP UMP pays back !* * H' his; in other words, a soul of such intensity, such sensibility, with all its strength ! " " not i» H' IP **notinlVW 9 H' IP shews » » not in IV H» THE HERO AS KING 245 this poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of fieaven or of Hell ! Oliver's life at St' Fves and ' Ely, as a sober industrious Farmer, is it not altogether as that of a true and ^ devout man ? He has renounced 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 ser- vants round him to worship God. He comforts persecuted ministers, is fond of preachers; nay can himself preach, — exhorts his neighbours to be wise, to redeem the time. In all this what ' hypocris)-,' ' ambition,' ' cant,' or other falsity ? lo The man's hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher World ; his aim to get well t/tithcr, by walking well through his humble course in tins 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 willing to come : in resistance to a public grievance. I mean, in that matter of the Bedford Fens. No one else will go to law with Authority ; therefore he will. That matter once settled, he returns 20 back into obscurity, to his Bible and his Plough, '(iain influence ' .' His influence is the most legitimate ; derived from personal knowledge of him, as a just, religious, reason- able and determined man. In this way he has lived tHl past fort}- ; 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 'ambitious ' ! I do not interpret his Par- liamentary mission in that way ! His successes in Parliament, his successes through the war, are honest successes of a brave man ; wh3 has more 3c resolution in the heart of him, more light in the head of him than other men. His prayers to God; his spoken ^^ not in II' 2 „ot in H' IP ^ HO paragraph in H' ■s 1 i\- il'i 246 LECTURES ON HEROES 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 conflict, 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 C'alvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving Cavaliers, worshipping not Cod but their own 'lovelocks,' frivolities and formalities, living quite apart from contem- 10 plations of God, living uuthotit God in the world, need it seem hypocritical. Nor will his participation in the King's death involve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern business killin|r of a K-ing ! 15ut 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 battle with him : it is he to die, or else you. Reconciliation is problematic ; may be possible, or, far more likely, is impossible. It is now pretty generally admitted that the Parliament, having vantpiished Charles 20 First, had no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the Independents, were most an.xious to do so; anxious indeed as for their own existence ; but it could not be. The unhappy Charles, in those iinal Hampton-Court nego- tiations, shows' himself as a man fatally incapable of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could not and would not «//(/( yjA?//*/; -whose thought did not in any measure represent to him the real fact of the matter ; nay worse, whose word did not at all represent his thought. We may 30 say this of him w ithout cruelty, with deep pity rather : but it is true and undeniable. Forsaken there of all but the name of Kingship, he still, finding himself treated with outward respect as a King, fancied that he might play-otf- 1 II' II- IP shews ^li' 11= IF play off .1 THE j//:a'(> as a/xc 247 party against party, and snui-glu himself into his old power by deceiving l,oth. Ahis, they botii ./iscoier,,/ that he was deceiving them. A man whose avv,/ will not inform you at all what he means or will do, is not a man you can bar- gain with. Vou must get out of that man's wav, or put him out of yours! The I'resbyterians, in their desi)air, were still for believing Charles, though found false, unbelievable again and again. Not so ( romwell : " For all our lighting," says he, " we are to have a little bit of paper ? " * No ! — ' ' In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive practical .0 eye of this man ; how he drives towards the practical and practicable ; 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 disc n even practical truth. Cromweirs 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 s-\ng or Z>^;//4-//-tiness''), Courage and the Faculty to do. ro This basis of the matter Cromwell had in him. One understands moreover how, though he cou'd not speak in Parliament, he might /m*.//, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity are all that is required. CromweH's habit of prayer is i notable feature of him. All his great enter- prises were commenced with prayer. In dark inextricable- looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble, 20 and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, some 'door of hope,' as they would name it, disclosed itself. ( onsider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries to the great (]od, to have pity on them, to make His light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Chri.t, is they felt themselves to be; a little band of Christian brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish, — they cried to Cod in their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was 30 His. The light which now rose upon them, —how could ^ II' II- logiti/iiig MP HMP fairspoken » H' H= H^ i9^/r(?ir/- a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate one ? 'There is no other method. • Hypocrisy ' ? One begins to weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to speak on such matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call a purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities ; gathering votes, advices ; they never were alone with the truth of a thing at all. — Cromwell's prayers were likely to be 'eloquent,' and much more than that. His was the heart of a man who <"f'«/(/ pray. 20 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 Parliantent ; one who, from the first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was always un- derstood to mean something, and men wished to know what. He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it : spoke always without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too, in those days seem to have been singularly candid ; and to have given the Printer precisely 30 what they found on their own note-paper. And withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the premedi- tative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the world. That to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches ! How came he not to study his words a little, THE ///-h'O AS A/A-i; 253 U'tore flinging thum out to the public ? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift for themselves. Hut with regard to Cromwell's 'lying,' we will mnke one remark. Tliis, I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. .MI parties found themselves de- ceived in him ; each party understood him to be meaning //lis, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out ' to have been meaning //i,rf .' He was, cry they, the chief of liars. Hut now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in such times, but simply of a lo superior man .' Such a man must have n-thrnos in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use for any man's taking-up - his abode in a house built of glass. .V 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 ////informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, w/.vinformed, but precisely as dark as he was ! This, could one hit the right phrase of 20 response, is what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer in such a case. OomweH, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small subaltern parties : uttered to them a/iws,-// cannot practise any consid- erable thing whatever. And we call it 'dissimulation,' all this? What would you think of calling the general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what 20 his thoughts were about everything? — Cromwell, I should rather say, managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An endless vor* of such questioning •corporals' rolled confusedly roun \ \ through his whole course; whom he did ansvver. 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 ? — It But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which y. , ervert to the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about their 'ambition,' 'falsity,' and suchlike.' The first is what I might call substituting the 1 11' IP IV such like m'M 7//A //hko .IS A/xi; 1^^ f^oal of their career for the course and starlini^-point of it. The vulvar Historian of a ( roinweil fancies that he had determined on being I'rotector of Knjjiand, at the time when he was ploiijjhing the marsh lands of ( ami)rid;;Lshire. His career hiy all niappedoul ' : a proj^rain of the whole drama; which he then step l)> step dramatically iinfoUkd, with all manner of cuniiin;;, deceptive dramaturgy, as he went on, - the hollow, scheminj; 'Yttok/jitj/v, or I'lay-actor, that he was! This is a radical perversion ; all hut univer- sal in such cases. .\nd think for an instant how dilterent lo the fact is ! How much does one of us foresee of his own life ? Short way ahead of us it is all dim ; an ////wound skein of possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, va-jue-loominji hopes. This Cromw.-il had not his life lying all in that fashion of l'roj,'rain, which he needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it was in i. measure so. What absurdities would fall-away^ of themselves, were this one undeni ii)lc fact kept honestly in view by History ! Historians indeed 20 will tell you that they do keep it in view ; but look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this {'romwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History only remember it ncnv and then. To remember it duly with rigorous perfection, as in the fact it stooii, requires indeed a rare faculty ; rare, nay impossible. .\ very Shakspeare for faculty ; or more than .Shaksi)eare ; who could Ohut a brother man's biograjihy, see with tlie brother man's eyes at all points of his course what things //f saw ; in short, kmn^' his course and him, as few 'Histo- 50 rians' a^e like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which distort our image of Cromwell, will dis- a).pcar, if we honestly so much as trv to represent tiiem so : \ H' 11- H^ mapped out WW II 'fall .iway 250 l/iC/'fA'AS OX //f-:A'0/-:s i: kl MCiiience, as they r.r/v, not in tlit- lump, .is ihcy arc thrj'Ati down ' licfurc us. Ill I .1 .'cond error, which I think the cenerality commit, refers • his same 'ambition* itself. U c ex x;,'-rr ite the am I li.i, r (ireat .Men; we mistake what the nature of it i'- force everybod), as j; ',\'.r.- i - . M ,:; everybody for (lod's sake, to .acknowledj^a. him I grc.t ■ i, and set him over the heads of men ! .Such a criture s ■ .m•. eij;ht of nie:inin<;, ;i terror i\u\ i >|.lendour as of ll.Mven itself? His existence there as inu) set hint heyond the need of j^ildin;,'. heath, |ud;;tnent uul Iternitv: these already lay as the background of wiiatsoever he tliou;;lil or did. All his life l.t v begirt as in a sea of nameless I hoii;4hts, lo which no speecii ol i mortal coiiUI name. Ciod's ^^ ord, as the l'urit.in prophet>of that time navl read it: this was :zrcat, and all else was little t" him. In .ill ^uch a man 'ambitious,' to ti„'ure I, m as tii |)riirient windl. 14 described I'love, set U1S to me the |)oorest s>.k-cism. .Sik h a man will s .y : "Keep your };ilt carria;^^ and Im/zaiii:; mobs, k'ep \* ur red-tape clerks, your inlluiiuialities, voui imimrtint itusinesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone: there is , v w//r/i i>/^ ///•■ in mi- already!" (Mil Samuel lohnson, the ■greatest .soul in |-.ni,'l,in(l in his d v, was iu<- and)itious. 20 'Corsica Hoswell ' daunted at niblic shows ■ wiiii printed ribbons round his hat; but tlii '^rcn old S.iunicl stayed • at home. The wt)rld-witle soid wra] up ' in it^ thoughts, in its sorrows;- what could paradin^~. aid rii tys in the hat,' do for it ? Ah yes, 1 will sa\ aj^ain: i he j^re • u/./// men! Look- in;: round on the nojsv in uiifv ot tiie worl woi ds wi ch little meanin;j;, actions with !ittU- w ri; me lovfs t reflect on the jjreat Kmpire of .Vv, . The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each n lis d.nattnient ; silently 30 thinkiny:, silently working win 110 Morning Newspaper 1 n.'t i/i H' II- -• H' IP shews ir 'i- II' IP -taiil li ' 1 1 - I r wrapt up I' n t *'i 1 1 •I- 258 LECTURES ON HEROES makes mention of! They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest which had no roots; which had all turned into leaves and bou};hs ; -which must soon wither and be no forest. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we can sho7i>,^ 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 s^nvid t,i/,:iit f^oiir Ic sih-ncc. 10 Let others that cannot do without standing on barrel- heads, to spout, and be seen of all the market-place, culti- vate 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 Sam- uel, not urged to writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he was, by ik'ant of tnoury, 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 iontinait of my thought hitherto; happily* I - have yet ZQ had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong enough to speak it. My 'system ' is not for promulgation first of all ; it is for serving myself to live by. That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the ' honour '.> Alas, yes; —but as Cato said of the statue: So many statues in that Forum of yours, may it not be better if they ask, Where is ( "ato's statue ? ' " Hut now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, let me say that there are two kinds of ambition ; one wholly blamable,* the other laudable and inevitable. Nature has 30 provided that the great silent Samuel shall not be silent too long. 'The selfish wish to shine o"er others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miserable. 'Seekest thou •'' * \V H» I happily Ml' H=than say, There ills. Ml' Il=blanieable 71 THE HEKO AS KING 259 great things, seek them not : ' this is most true. ,^d yet, I say, there is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop^ himself according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak-out,- to act-out,' what Nature has laid in him. This is proper, lit, 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 consist- ing in this: To unfold your self, to work what thing you have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge beautifully remarks lo that the infant learns to speak by this necessity it feels. — We will say therefore : To decide about ambition, w hether 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 Min ter, how shall we blame it, if he were 'the only man in France that could have done any good there ? ' Hopefuler* perhaps had he not so clearly/// how much 20 good he could do ! But a poor Necker, who could do no good, and had even felt that he could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because they had Hung him out, and he was now quit of it, well might (libhon mourn over him. Na- ture, I say, has provided amply that the silent great man shall strive to speak withal ; too amply, rather ! Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave old Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that it was possible for him to do priceless divine work for his country and the whole world. That the perfect Heavenly Law 30 might be made Law on this F.arth ; that the prayer he prayed daily, ' Thy kingdom come,' was at length to be ^ 'I k ••'i » II« H= IPdevelope 2 II« IF H^ speak out ■" H' IF- IP act out MP ncpcfiillcr 260 LECTURES OAT I/EROES «4 fulfilled ! If you had convinced his judgment of this ; that it was possible, practicable; that he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a part in it ! Would not the whole soul of the man have flamed-up » into a divine clearness, into noble utterance and determination to act ; casting all sorrows and misgivings under his feet, counting all afflic- tion and contradiction small, — the whole dark element of his existence blazing into articulate radiance of light and lightning ? It were a true ambition this ! And think now 10 how it actually was with Cromwell. From of old, the suf- ferings of God's Church, true zealous Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set on pillories, their ears cropt-oft,' (Jod'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 E;irth ; trusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness would come, — that such a course was false, unjust, and could not last forever. And now behold the dawn of it ; after twelve years silent waiting, all Eng- 20 land stirs itself ; there is to be once more a Parliament, the Right will get a voice for itself: inexpressible well- grounded hope has come again into the Karth. Was not such a Parliament worth being a member of .> Cromwe" 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 triumphcJ, its once so formidable 30 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 J II' ir IP llan.ed up ^ H' ll-' 11^ cropt off ^ no paragraph in II' W IP 11 THK JIENO AS A'/XG 261 Hero of all England, — what of this ? It was possible that the Law of Christ's (lospcl could now establish itself in the world ! The Theocracy which John Knox in his pulpit might dream of as a 'devout imagination," this practical man, experienced in the whole chaos of most rough prac- tice, dared to consider as capable of being im/is.:/. 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 ////,-, (lod's truth ? And if inic, was it not then the very thing to do? lo The strongest practical intellect in Kngland dared to answer, Ves ! This I call a noble true purjiose ; is it not, in its own dialect, the noblest tiiat could enter into the heart of Statesman or man ? For a Knox lo take it uj) was something; but for a Cromwell, with his great sound sense and experience of what our world i.uts, — History, I think, shows 1 it only this once in such a degree. I account it the culminating jjoint of Protestantism ; the most heroic phasis that 'Faith in the I'.ible ' was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it: that it were made manifest to one 20 of us, how we could make the Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and all that we had longed and jirayed for, as the highest good to Kngland and all lands, an attainable fact! Well, I must say, the rii/piiir intellect, with ils knowing- ness, its alertness and expertness in 'detecting hypocrites,' seems to me a rather sorry business. We have had but one such Statesman in Kngland ; one man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the heart of him any such pur- pose at all. One man, in the course of rifteen-hundred - 30 years; and this was his welcome. He had adherents by the hundred or the ten ; opi)oneats by the million. Had Kngland rallied all round hi»i, — why, then, Kngland might » II' IV IP shews 2 W 11" IV fifteen hundred 1 « .■ \ r. R 262 LECTURES OX HEROES li; If 1 4: P I: i I- have been a Christian land 1 As it is, vulpine knowingness sits yet at its hopeless problem, 'Given a world of Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action'; -how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery Law-Courts, and some other places ! V'xW 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, lo and a multitude following him, come upon me here with an admission that Crumwell 7i How will you govern these » H» IP hand, 30 II' THE IIKKO AS KIXC 265 Nations, which I'rovidfncc in a wondrous way has siven- up» to your disposal? Clearly those hundred surrivin- members of the Long Parliament, who sit there as supreme authority, cannot continue forever to sit. What is to be done?— It was a question which theoretical constitution- builders may find easy to answer ; but to ( romwell, look- ing 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. Vet the Soldiers too, however contrary lo to Formula, they who had purchased this victory with their l)lood, it seemed to them that they also should have some- thing to say in it ! We will not " I-or ^' all our fightin- have nothing but a little piece of paper." We understand that the Law of (lod's (lospel, to which He through us has given the victory, shall establish itself, or trv to establish itself, in this land ! For three years, Cromwell says, this question had been sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They could make no answer; nothing but talk, talk. Perhaps it lies in the -^o 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 f.ist odious, fven despicable, to the whole nation, whom tlie nation already calls » Rump Parliament, yo„ cannot continue to sit there: who or what then is to follow? 'Free Parlia- ment,' right of Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the other, — the thing is a hungry lact coming on us, which we must answer or be devoured by it ! And who 30 are you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights of Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to make J ir IP H' given up 2 H' FI= IP for 'II' IP IP call t 266 LF.C TURKS OJSr I/EKOES H j 1. i it m li 't i! Pride's Purges, to expel and banish by the law of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause prosiier : 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 I How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this day. The diligent (Jodwin himself admits that he cannot make it out. The likeliest is, that this poor Parliament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve and disperse ; 10 that when it came to the point of actually dispersing, they again, for the tenth or twentieth time, adjourned it, — and Cromwell's patience failed him. Hut we will take the favourablest hypothesis ever started for the Parliament ; the favourablest, though I believe it is not the true one, but too favourable.' According to this version : At the uttermost crisis, when Cromwell and his Officers were met on the one hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump Members on the other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in its despair was 20 answering in a very singular way ; that in their splenetic envious despair, to keep-out '' the Army at least, these men were hurrying through the House a kind of Reform Bill, — Parliament to be chosen by the whole of England ; equable electoral division into districts ; free suffrage, and the rest of it ! A very questionable, or indeed for them an unques- tionable thing. Reform Hill, free suffrage of Englishmen ? Why, the Royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not exterminated, perhaps onViumber us; the great numerical majority of England was always indifferent to our Cause, 30 merely looked at it and submitted to it. 't is in weight and force, not by counting of heads, t, .. we are the n«..jority ! And now with your Formulas and Reform Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall 1 no paragraph in IP H» H' « H' H» H' keep out n ////■: HE NO AS KIXU l«l % 1 I again launch itself to sea ; become a mere hope, and like- lihood, jw.///even as a likelihood? And it is not a likeli- hood; it is a certainty, which we have won, by (lod's strength and our own right hands, and do now hold hen: Cromwell walked down to these refractory Members ; inter- rupted them in that rapid speed of their Reform Hill ; — ordered them to begone, and talk there no more. —Can we not forgive him ? (^an we not understand him ? John Milton, who looked on it all near at hand, could applaud him. The Reality had swept the Formulas away before it. lo I fancy, most men who were realities ' in Kngland might see into the necessity of that. The strong daring man, therefore, has set all manner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him ; has dared appeal to the genuine Fact of this Kngland, 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 Parlia- ment, the one they call Harebones's Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convocation of tfie XouibliS. From all quarters of 20 England the leading Ministers and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men most distinguished by religious reputa- tion, influence and attachment to the true Cause: these are assembled to shai)c-out - a plan. They sanctioned what was past ; shaped as they could what was to come, riiey were scornfully called Barehoiu-ss Parlhincnt : the man's name, it seems, was not Bareboms, but l5arbone, a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality, - a trial on the part of these J'uritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become 30 the Law of this Kngland. There were men of sense among them, men of some quality ; men of deep piety I suppose the roost of them were. They failed, it seems, and broke- n \ * H' II' IP Realities II' H-^ 11' shape out 268 LECTUKKS OAT I/KA'OJiS - W *i " m ■J ' ' % * It 11 down,' endeavouring to reform the Court of Chancery! They* dissolved themselves, as incompetent; deliveredup their power again into the hands of the Lord (General Cromwell, to do with it what he liked and could.* What ' 7iv7/ he do with it ? I'he Lord (leneral Cromwell, •Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised and to be raised;' he hereby sees himself, at this unexampled junc- ture, as it were the one available Authority left in Kngland. nothing between Kngland and utter Anarchy but him alone. 10 Such is the undeniable Fact of his position and Kngland's, there and then. What will he do with it ? After delibera- tion, he decides that he will acct// it ; will formally, with public solemnity, say and vow before (lod and men, "Yes, the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it ! " Pro- tectorship, Instrument of (lovernment, — these are the external forms of the thinjr; worked out and sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by the Judges, by the leading Official people, • Council of Officers and Persons of interest in the Nation : ' and as for the thing itself, un- 2o deniably enough, at the pass matters had now come to, there was no alternative but Anarchy or that. Puritan Kngland might accept it or not ; but Puritan Kngland was, in real truth, saved from suicide thereby ! — I believe the Puritan People did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole grateful and real way, accept this anomalous act of Oliver's; at least, he and they together made it good, and always better to the last. But in their Parliamentary articulate way, they had their difficulties, and never knew fully what to say to it ' ! — 30 Oliver's* second Parliament, properly^ his yir>j/ regular » H' H» IP broke down 22 iji ijs XJiL-y appuintcd Cromwell Protector, and went their ways. '* This entire paragraph appear: first in IP ♦H' IP The ^^ not in WW TtlK llKh'O AS KIXG W) I'arli.imtnt,' chosen by the rule liid-down ' in the Instru- ment of (iovcrninnit,' did assemble, and worked;- but got, before long, into bottomless questions is to the Pro. tector's ni;/it, as lo 'usurpation,' and so forth; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. Cromwell's con- cluding SiK-ech to tiuse men is a remarkable one. So- likewise to his third rarliainent, in similar n-bukc for their pedantries and obstinacies.'' Most rude, chaotic, all these SjK'eches are ; but most earnest-looking. \ou would say, it was a si.ncerf helpless man ; not used to s/<,;tk the great ic inorganic thought of him, but to act it rather I .\ helpless- ness of utter, uicc, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He talks much about 'births of Providence : ' All these changes, so many victories and events, were nr)t forethoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of w, or of men ; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in calling them so! He in- sists with a heavy sulphurous wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, the w(jrld wholly thrown into chaos round him, had foirurn it all, and played it all off 20 like a jjrecontrivcd puppetshow ' by wood and wire ! These things were foreseen by no man, he says ; no man could tell what a day would bring forth: they were 'births of Providence,' (lod's finger guided us on, and we came at last to clear height of victory, C.od's Cause triumphant in these Nations ; and you as a Parliament could assemble together, and say in what manner all this could be (>r^',inheoltonileNs cavillings und ((ucstionin^^ about written laws for my coming hcru ; and would send the whole matter in ( haos a};ain, iHrcausc I have no \olary'>» parchment, but only (iod's voice from the battle-whirlwind, for bein}; President amon^ you ! That opiMirtuuity is ^onc , and wc know not when it will return. Vou have had your constitutional Lo^ic ; and Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules yet in this land, "(lod be judge between ymi 10 and me ! " These are his final words to them : Take yoii your constitution-formulas in your hand ; and I my ///formal struggles, purposes, realities and acts; and "(Jwl Ix; judge between you and me ! " — We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic things the printed Sjieeches of ( romwell ' are. Wilfully ambigu ous, unintelligible, say the most : a hypocrite shroudin;; himself in confused Jesuitic jargon ! To me they do not seem so. I will say rather, they afforded the first glimpses I could ever get into the reality of this Cromwell, nay into 20 the possibility of him. Try to believe that he means some- thing, search lovingly what that may be: you will find a real speech lying imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utterances; a meaning in the great heart of this inarticu- late man ! Vou will, for the first time, begin to see that hi- was a man; not an enigmatic chimera, unintelligible t(t you, incredible to you. I'he Histories and Hiographies written of this Cromwell, written in shallow sceptical gen- erations that could not know or conceive of a deep believ- ing man, are far more obsiitn- than Cromwell's Speeches. 30 You look through them only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. 'Heats and jealousies,' says Lord Clarendon himself: 'heats and jealousies,' mere crabbed whims, theories and crotchets ; these induced slow sober 1 ir IP Cromwell's I ii rill. iti:f.'o AS KixG 271 quiet Kn^liHhincn lo lay dcjvvn im ir |)lt)ii;»hH uiul work; and (ly into red fury of confu.scd \\\x against the best-con- ditioned of Kinj^s! I'ly if yon t.in find th.it true. Stepti- cisnj writing; ahoiit Ik-lief iniy have ;;rLMt ^ift^ ; Imt it i!% really /////<» -ins there. It is llliiuiness layin^-down ' the Laws of Optics. CromweH's third Parliament split on the >,anie rock as hi.H second. Kver the con^tiiutional I ornnil.i llow(anK' you there.' Show- us M)ine Notary parcliinciil ! Ulind pedants: — "Why, sup.In the same power which makes lo you a Parliament, tint, uid somethin;^ more, made me a i'roteclor ! " If my Protcclorship is notliiii;^, wh.it in the name of wonder is your l'arliamenie<''"'>hip, i rellex and creation of thai . - Parliaments havin^r fiil •'', th< re remained nolhinj; but the way of Despotism. .\Iilj;Hy I M.tators, each with iiis district, to cot-rce th»r Ko\,ilisi and oih.. r ^ainsayers, to govern them, if not by ait of I'.irliament, then by the sword. Fonnula sh ill not carry it, while the Reality is here! I will go on, jiroteclinf^ ojjpressed I'rotesi.i'its :o abroad, appointinj; just judj^es, wise manaj^ers, at lior.)'-. cherishinjj true (iospel ministers; doiui^ the best I car. i,. make Kngland a Christian Kn;j;lan(l, gre.iter than (;ld ki-v ^ the (^ueen of i'rotestant Christianity; I, since you wi!! w >' help me; I while Cod leaves nic lite I Why did he noi j;ive it up; retire into obscurity ajriin. >ince the Law would not acknowledf^e him ? cry several. Ill it is where they mistake. For him ther*.- was no ;^ivin<; of it up! i'rime Ministers have governed countries, Pitt. Pombal, Choiseul ; and their word was a law while it held : but this Prime 30 Minister was one that louhl iu>l ^,t ii-^ii^iicil. Let him once resign, Charles .Stuart and the Cavaliers waited to kill him; to kill the Cause and him. Unce embarked, there is no . '1 r ^ r ' H' II' 111 laying down ^ II' II-" IP Shew I I : i Hi 1 272 LECTUKES ON HEROES retreat, no return. This Prime Minister could retire no whither except into his tomb. One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His com- plaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence has laid on him. Heavy ; which he must bear till death. Old Colo- nel Hutchinson,' as his wife relates it, Hutchinson,* his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some indispensable busi- ness, much against his will, — Cromwell 'follows him to the door,' in a most fraternal, domestic, conciliatory style; 10 begs that he would be reconciled to him, his old brother in arms ; says how much it grieves him to be misunderstood, deserted by true fellow-soldiers," dear to him from of old : the rigorous Hutchinson,* cased in his Republican ' formula, sullenly goes hisway. — And the man's head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work ! I think always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that Palace of his; a right brave woman; as indeed they lived all an honest Cod-fearing Household there: if she heard a shot go-olT," she thought it was her son killed. He had to 20 come to her at ' least once' a day, that she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old Mother ! What had this man gained ; what had he gained .' Fie 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 liar, but a genuinely honest man! 30 Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much ii ' "' "' Ilutrhesoii 4 n. ||2 Hii^-heson " "' "' llutclics..n & H' IP Presbyterian " H' IP IPfcllcjw SDlditr^, ''' II' II- IPyo off, ' " 11' 11- twice THE IIKKO AS A/XG 273 for us ? in- walk smoothly over his j,'rcat rouj;h heroic life ; step-over' his body sunk in the ditch tlu-re. We need not .>////-« it, as we stej) on it ! - Let the Hero rest. It was not to f/ufi's judgment that he appealed ; nor have men judged him very well. Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had got itself hushed-up- into decent composure, and its results made smooth, in ir)SS, there hrokeout a far deeper explosion, much more ditficult to hushup,^ known to all mortals, and like to he long known, by the name of i'rench lo Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of Prot- estantism ; the explosive c(jnfiised return of mankind to Reality and Pact, now that they were iierishing of Sem- blance and .Sham. We call our l.n-lish Puritanism the second act: "Well then,' the i;il)!e is true; let us go by the liible ! " " In ( hurch," said Luther ; " In ( hurch and State," said Cromweil, "k-t us go by what actually /, (iod's Truth." Men have to return to reality: they cannot live on semblance. The I'rench Kev(jlutioii, or third act, we may well call the linal one ; for lower than that savage S,n/.s- jo adoltism men cannot go. They stand there on the nakedest haggard Pact, undeniable in all seasons and circumstances; and may and must begin ;igain confidently to build-up'' from that. The Prench explosion, like the P.nglish one. got its King, -who had no Notary i)archmi-nt to show ■ for him- self. W'e have still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, our second modern King. Napolef»n tloes by no means si-cm to me so great a man as fromwell. His enormous victories which reached over S 'i ' II' II- ll'lni.h ii|., • II' 11-^ llim ' IP II- H'str|>.,vel "- IP 11- IP Imshca up ^IP 11= IPl;r..ki-...:! • If \V ll'l.mid uj ■ IP H- II'>law r i5- li II • 1. II 274 I.ECTUKF.S ON Hl.KOES all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly in our little Enj;- land, are but as the high slilts on which the man is seen stand ing ;' the stature of the man is not altered thereby. 1 find in him no such simcily as in Cromwell ; only a far inferior sort. No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful ' Unnamable ' of this Universe ; ' walking with God,' as he called it ; and faith and strength in that alone : lalcnt thought and valour, content to lie latent, then burst out as in blaze of Heaven's lightning ! Napoleon lived in an a^je ,o when God was no longer believed ; the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to be Nonentity : he had to bogin not out of the Puritan Bible, but out of poor Scepti- cal Encvchpedies. This was the length the man carried it. Meritorious to get so far. His compact, prompt, everyway - articulate character is in itself perhaps small, compared with our great chaotic ///articulate Cromwell's. Instead of 'dumb Prophet struggling to speak,' we have a portentous mixture of the Quack withal ! Hume's notion of the Fanatic-Hypo- crite, with such truth as it has, will apply much better to 2o Napoleon than it did to Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, — where indeed taken strictly it has hardly any truth at all. An element of blamable » ambition shows * itself, from the first, in this man ; gets the victory over him at last, and involves him and his work in ruin. ' False as a bulletin ' became a proverb in Napoleon's time. He makes what excuse he could for it : that it was necessary to mislead the enemy, to keep-up^ his own men's courage, and so forth. On the whole, there « are no excuses. A man in no case has liberty to tell lies. It had been, in 30 the long-run, better for Napoleon too if he had not told any. 1 1 IP IP Awful, rnnanieal.le II' Awful. Unnamable ■i |i' IP IPevtry-way * H' H' H' shews « ll« IP blameabk MP IP 11^ keep up V 6 11" IP these TlfE I fF.no AS KING 27S In fact, if a man have any purpose reachinj; beyond the hour and day, meant to be found extant luwl day, what good can it ever be to iiromulgate lies ? I'he lies are found- out ' ; ruinous penalty is exacted for them. No man will believe the liar next time even when he speaks truth, when it is of the last importance that he be believed. The old cry of wolf ! *- A Lie is //c-thing ; you cannot of nothinj.' make something ; you make nothing at last, and lose your labour into the bargain. Vet Napoleon luiJ a sincerity: we are to distinguish be- ic tween what is superficial and what is fundamental in insin- cerity. Across these outer manctuverings- and quackeries of his, which were many and most blamable,^ let us discern withal that the man had a certain instinctive ineradicable feeling for reality ; and did base himself upon fact, so long as he had any basis. He has an instinct of Nature better than his culture was. His savnns, Hourrienne tells us, in that voyage to Kgypt were one evening busily occupied arguing that there could be no (lod. They had proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. Napoleon ::o looking up into the stars, answers, " \\.ry ingenious. Mes- sieurs : but w/io made all that ? " The Atheistic logic runs- ofT* from him like water; the great I-'act stares him in the face: "Who made al! that?" So too in Practice: he, as every man that can be great, or have victory in this world, sees, througii all entanglements, the i)ractical heart of the matter; drives straight towards tliat. When the steward of his Tuileries Palace was exhibiting the new upholstery, with praises, and demonstration how glorious it was, and how cheaj) withal. Napoleon, making little answer, asked 30 for a pair of scissors, dipt one of th>' gold t,i^>.cls frf»m a window-curtain, ])ut it in his pocket, and walked on. Some m 1^ ' II' 11= H' found Mut - II' II- II' maii(LUvriiu;s ' M' ir 1.!..iiil:.!.Iu. * II' II- IP runs off ■ f 276 LECTURES OxY HEROES ^1 days afterwards, he produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his upholstery functionary ; it was not gold but tinsel ! In Saint Helena, it is notable how he still, to his last days, insists on the practical, the real. "Why talk and complain ; above all, why quarrel with one another ? There is no result^ in it ; it comes to nothing that one can do. Say nothing, if one can do nothing ! " He speaks often so, to his poor discontented followers ; he is like a piece of silent strength in the middle of their morbid 10 querulousness there. And accordingly was there not wiiat we can call a faith in him, genuine so far as it went ? That this new enor- mous Democracy asserting itself here in the French Revo- lution is an insuppressible Fact, which the whole world, with its old forces and institutions, cannot put down ; this was a true insight of his, and took his conscience and en- thusiasm along with it, — -x faith. And did he not iTiterpret the dim purport of it well ? '■I. a carricre ouverte a//.\ takns, The implements to him who can handle them : ' this actu- 20 ally is the truth, and even the whole truth ; it includes what- ever the French Revolution, or any Revolution, could mean. Napoleon, in his fir:,t period, was a true F)emocrat. .And yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his military trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were a true thing at all, could not be an anarchy : the ni.ui had a heart-hatred for anarchy. On that Twentieth of June ( 1792), 15ourrienne and he sat in a coffee-house, as the nioh rolled by : Napoleon expresses the deejjest contempt for persons in authority that they do not restrain tliis rabble. On the Tenth of .\ugust he won- 30 ders wliy there is no man to command these poor Swiss : they would concn'.er if tliere were. Such a faith in Demor racy, yet hatred of anarchy, it is that carries Napoleon through all his great work. 1 ir 11-^ Throujih his brilliant Italian I csultut Tl/K HE NO AS A'/XO 277 Campaigns, onwards to the Peace of Leoben,' one would say, his inspiration is ; ' i'riuiuph to the French Revolution; assertion of it against these Austrian Simulacra that pre- tend to call it a Simulacrum ! ' Witlial, however, he feels, and has a right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is ; how the Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. To bridle-in - that great devouring, self-devouring French Revolution ; to / connect him- self with Austrian Dynasties, Pojiedoins, witli the old false Feudalities, which he once saw clearly to be f iImc ; con- sidered that //<■ would found "his Dynasty" and so forth ; 30 that the enormous French Revolution nu-ant (mlv tiiai! The man was 'given-up' to strong delusion, iliat he sliould ' IP \mi\m\ - 11' l,rull<; Ml •' II' H- II 'given up % 1-f 278 I.F.CTrKF.S OX IIF.KOI.S if Cf^ believe a lie;' a fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true from false now when he looked at them, — the fearfulest' penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. Self-xnA false ambition had now become his god : * «/>^deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally more and more. What a paltry patchwork of theatrical paper-mantles, tinsel and mummery, had this man wrapt his own great reality in, thinking to make it more real thereby! His hollow I'()pe's-6W<-^'/-//«/, pretend- 10 ing to be a re-establishment of Catholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpating it, "/ He had gone that way of his; and Nature also had gone her way. Having once parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity': ^o no rescue for him. He had to sink there, mournfully as man .seldom did ; and break his great heart, and die,— this poor Napoleon : a great im])Iement too soon wasted, till it was useless • our last Great Man ! Our last, in a double sense. For here linailv these wide roamings of ours through so many times and places, in search and stu.ly of Heroes, arc to terminate. I am sorry for it: there was pleasure for me in tliis business, if also much i)ain. It is a great subject, and a most grave an in the rudest manner in order to j;et into it at all. Often enou;,di, with these al)riii)t utterances throw n-ouf isolated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the trial. Tolerance, p;'tient candour, all hopinj; favour and kindness, which I will not sjieak of at i)resent. ihe .accomplished and distinj,'uished, the beautiful, tiic wise, somethinj; of lo what is best in Kn<;Iand, have listened patiently to my rude words. With many feelin;,'s, I heartily thank you all; and say, (lood be with you ail ! ' II' II-' IPlmak Kroumi II' II- IP thrown out X . IJ I . i: f I; ■v-f- \\ if' "ij ^' f CARLYF.KS SCMMAkY ft* n LKCTiJki: I THE HERO AS OIVIMTV. or»t\. lAOAMSM : S( AMHXAVU.V MVTIIOI.CMiV Heroes: Universal History consists essentiallv nf their unitt-.l IMoKraphies. Kelinion not a man's iliiir. ii-i nid. hut liis pr.u tit al 6t/ie/A\yout himself and tlie I nivers.. : Untli with Mm and Nations it is the One fact aljout them whirl, crcativtiv d.tcrmiius all the rest. Heathenism: Christianity: Mod, rn Snptii i>ni. The Hero as Divinity. Pajjanism a fai t ; not Ouai kcrv. nor .MiLuorv : Not to be pretentiously -explained '; to he h)oked at as old Thought. and with sympathy (p. i ). Nature no more seems divine except to the I' rojjhet or Poet, because men have ceased to //»;/>(•.• To the I'ayan Thinkir. as t., a child-man, all was either godlike or (Jod. Canopus : Man. Hero-worship the basis of Religion. I.oyaltv. Society. A Hero not the 'creature of the time": Hero-worship indestructihi.'. Johnson : Voltaire (8). .Scandinavian Paganism the Kelij,don of our Fathers. Ireland, the home of the Xorse I'oets. described. TIk- /CMi. Ihe prin,..ry characteristic of Xorse Paganism, the impensonation of tiie vi.sihie workings of Nature. Jotuns and the < iods. Kire : IVost : 'riiunder : The Sun : Sea-Tempest. Mythus of the Creation : The Life- Tree Igdrasil. The modern ^ Afni/iiiu- of the Universe' ( i,S). The Norse Creed, as recorded, the summation of several suc- cessive sy.stems : Originally tlie shape ^iven to the national thought hy their first • Man of C.enius.' Odin : He has no history or date ; yet was no mere adjective, but a man of tiesh and l)lood. Ilou deified. The World of Nature, to every man a Fantasy of Him- self (24). =8J %f MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 :fi^ 1^ 1.1 1.25 IM 1.4 2-5 1^ 3.2 3.6 " mil 2.0 m 1.6 A /APPLIED IIVMGE Ir ^K '653 East Main Street I^S Rochester. New York U609 USA '^SS (716) 482 - 0300 - Phone ^B (716) 288-5989 -Fox l\" t: m n ■ ^' ^■1 ' 1 k Bf: mh 284 LECTURES ON HEROES Odin tlie inventor of Runes, of Letters and Poetry. His recep- tion as a Hero : tlie pattern Norse-Man ; a Cod : His shadow over the whole History of his People (31). The essence of Norse Paganism, not so much Morality, as a sincere recognition of Nature: Sincerity Ijetter than ( Gracefulness. The Allegories, the after-creations of the Faith. Main practical IJelief: Hall of Odin: Valkyrs: Destiny: Necessity of Valour. Its worth : Their Sea-Kings, Woodcutter Kings, our spiritual Progenitors. The growth of Odinism (34). The strong simplicity of Norse lore cjuite unrecognised by Gray. Thor's veritable Norse rage : ISalder, tlie wliite Sungod. How the old Norse heart loves the Thunder-god, and sports with him : Huge Brobdingnag genius, needing only to be tamed-down into Shakspeares, Goetlies. Truth in the Norse Songs : This World a show. Thor's Invasion of Jotunheim. The Ragnarok, or Twi- light of the Gods : The Old must die, that the New and Better may be born. Thor's last appearance. The Norse Creed a Con- secration of Valour. It and the whole Past a possession of the Present (39). LECi JRE II THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM The Hero no longer regarded as a God, but as one god-inspired. All Heroes primarily of the same stuff ; differing according to their reception. The welcome of its Heroes, the truest test of an epoch. Odin : Burns (p. 48). Mahomet a true Prophet; not a scheming Impostor. A Great Man, and therefore first of all a sincere man : No man to be judged merely by his faults. David the Hebrew King. Of all acts for man repentance the most divine : The deadliest sin, a supercilious consciousness of none (50). Arabia described. The Arabs always a gifted people ; of wild strong feelings, and of iron restraint over these. Their Religiosity ; Their Star-worship : Their Prophets and inspired men ; n Job downwards. Tlieir Holy Places. Mecca, its site, hi y and government (54). Mahomet. His youth : His fond Grandfather. Had no book- learning : Travels to the Syrian Fairs ; and first comes in contact CARL VLB'S Si'ALUAK V 2S5 with the Christian Religion. An aitojjethcr solid, hrotherly, genu- ine man : A good laugh, and a good Hash of anger in him withal (S8). Marries Kadijah. Hegins his I'rophet-career at forty years of age. Allah Akbar ; ('.oi\ is great: Islam; we must submit to Clod. Do we not all live in Islam.? .Mahomet, -the Prophet of God' (6 1). The good Kadijah believes in him : Mahomet's gratitude. His slow progress: Among forty of liis kindred, young Ali alone joined him. His good Uncle expostulates with" him: Maliomet, bursting into tears, persists in his mission. The Hegira. Propa- gating by the sword : First get your sword : A thing will propagate itself as it can. Nature a just umpire. Mahomet's Creed un- speakably better than tiie wooden idolatries and jangling Syrian Sects extirpated by it (66). The Koran, the universal standard of Mahometan life: An imperfectly, badly written, Ijut genuine book : Ivnthusiastic extem- pore preaching, amid the hot haste of wrestling with tiesh-an.l- blood and spiritual enemies. Its direct poetic insight. The World, Man, human Compassion ; all wliolly miraculous to Ma- homet (73). His religion did not succeed by ' being easv ' : None can. The sensual part of it not of Mahomet's making. He himstlf, frugal ; patched his own clothes ; proved a hero in a rough actual trial of twenty-three years. Traits of his generosity and resignation. His total freedom from cant (So). His moral precepts not always of the superfinest sort ; yet is there always a tendency to good in them. His Heaven and Hell sensual, yet not altogether so. Infinite Nature of Duty. The evil of sensuality, in the slavery to jjlea.sant things, not in the en- joyment of them. Mahometanism a religion heartily hilieved. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness ii.to light: Arabia first became alive by means ol it (S4). ^ M r I ii 286 LECTURES ON HEROES LECTURE HI THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE The Hero as Divinity or Prophet, inconsistent with the modern progress of science: The Hero I'oet, a figure common to all ages. All Heroes at bottom the same ; the different sphere constituting the grand distinction: Examples. Varieties of aptitude (p. 89). Poet and Prophet meet in I'ates : Their (iospel the same, for the Beautiful and the ( iood are one. All men somewhat of poets ; and the highest Poets far from perfect. Prose, and Poetry or musical Thoiii^ht. Song a kind of inarticulate uiifathomaI)le speech: All deep things are Song. The Hero as Divinity, as Prophet, and then only as Poet, no indication chat our estimate of the Great Man is diminishing: The Poet seems to be losing caste, but it is rather that our notions of God are rising higher (91 ). Shakspeare and Dante, Saints of Poetry. Dante : His history, in his Book and Portrait. His scholastic education, and its fruit of subtlety. His miseries: Love of Beatrice: His marriage not happy. A banished man : Will never return, '* to plead guilty be the condition. His wanderings: ''■Come uuro calie" At the Court of Delia Scala. The great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more and more in Eternity. His mvstic, unfathomable Song. Deatli : Buried at Ravenna (98). His Divina Commedia a Song: (Jo lieep enough, there is music everywhere. The sincerest of Poems : It has all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his soul. Its Intensity, and Pictorial power. The three parts make-up the true Unseen World of the Middle Ages: How the Christian Dante felt Good and Evil to he the two polar elements of this Creation. Paganism and Christian- ism (103). Ten silent centuries found a voice in Dante. The thing that is uttered from the inmost parts of a man's soul differs altogether from what is uttered by the outer. The ' uses ' of Dante : We will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas it saves us. Ma- homet and Dante v-ontrasted. Let a man tfo his work ; the fruit of it is the care of .Anotlier than lie (112). As Dante iml)0(lies musically the Inner Life of the Middle Ages, su does Shaks))e;ue embody the Outer Life which grew CAKLVLE'S SUMMARY 287 therefrom. The strange outbudding of English Existence which we call ' Elizabethan Era.' Shakspeare the chief of all Poets : His calm, all-seeing Intellect : His marvellous Portrait-painting (HS). The Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough, — tliat he be able to see. Intellect the summary of all human gifts : Human intellect and vulpine intellect contrasted. Shakspeare's instinctive unconscious greatness: His works a part of Nature, and partaking of her inexhaustible depth. Shakspeare greater than Dante ; in that he not only sorrowed, but triumphed over his sorrows. His mirthfulness, and genuine overflowing love of laughter. His Historical Plays, a kind of National Epic. The IJattle of Agincourt : A noble Patriotism, far other than the ' in- difference ' sometimes ascribed to him. His works, like so many windows, tlirough which we see glimpses of the world that is in him (120). Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism: Out of this Shakspeare too there rises a kind of Universal Psalm, not unfit to make itself heard among still more sacred Psalms. Shakspeare an 'unconscious Prophet'; and therein greater and truer than Mahomet. This poor Warwickshire Peasant worth more to us than a whole regiment of highest Dignitaries: Indian Empire, or Shakspeare, — which ? An English King, whom no time or chance can dethrone : A raliying-sign anu bond of brother- hood for all Saxondom : Wheresoever English men and women are, they will say to one another, ' Yes. this Shakspeare is ouxsT (127). LECTURE IV THE HKRO AS PRIKST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM The Priest a kind of Prophet ; but more familiar, as the daily enlightener of daily life. A true Reformer he who appeals to Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force. The finished Poet often a symptom that his epoch iteelf has reached perfection, and finished. Alas, the battling Reformer, too, is at times a needful .nnr! inevitable jilicnomenon : Offences do accu- mulate, till they become insupportable. Forms of Belief, modes "51 288 Vtli a *i i: J r LECTUKES ON HEKOEi of life must perish ; yet the (;,„ ' of the I'ast survives, an ever lasting' possession for us all (p. 132). Idols, or visible recognised Syml.ols. conim.n to ail Relii,nons- Hateful only when insincere: The property of every Hero, that he come back to sincerity, to reality: Protestantism and 'private judgment Nr ming communion possiI,le a.nonj; men «h.. ou to7r ' '" ^^ '""' "-°-''---'>-' -ho delivers n,en out of darkness mto l,«ht. \ot abolition of Hero-worship does I rotestantism mean ; but rather a whole World of Heroes of ,i„. cere, believing men (I3Ji t<> seek, and' not knowing in vvl.at manner to pnn in^d aJ)oyL''- ' 'i*-' e?i of Mod"ernll man and man: The'soulof Order, to wliicli all tliin-s, Revolutions included, work. Some Cromwell or .Vii.oleon the neccssan- tijiish .d Sanscul.mism. The matiner in which Kind's were made, and Kiniishi^^UselMirst took ri.se ^2 29).^ -,,,•.■ • , -FlBtanism a section ofth.. nnivers:d war ..t I'.eli.l a.i;amst Make'-FeTiTve. Laud a weak ill-starred Pedant: in liis spasmodic vehemence 'heeding no voice of prudence, no cry of pity. Uni- versal necessitv for true Forms: How to distinguish between True and False. Tlie nakedist R.ality prefend.le to any empty Semblance, however di,i,'nitied (234).* The work of tlie I'uritans. The Sceptical Kightecnth century, and its constitutional estimate of Cromwell and his associates. No wish to dispara-e such charactus as Hampden, l-.liot I'ym : a most constitutional, unblamal .Ic, .li-niticl set of men. "I he ru.u..;cd outcast Cromwell, the man of them all in wh-,.m one stdl linds >,mian stuff. The One thin^ worth revolting t'-r (^37)- Cromwell-s ■ hvi.o.Tisv.- an imimssil.K- the..ry. Ihs pious Life . a Farmer until' forty years of ..-e. 1 1 is public successes honest .accesses ..f a brave man. His parti.ipation in the km- s ,g. U^O ill 292 i-aCTU/iJiS ON HKfiOKS • f\ Humes fanatic- Hypocrite thenrv u^ • .. where a A'/Wi^is in nil n, I' ""^'^ '"dispensable every- Puritanism ^o ^.■n: n?r?^"'r. ""' ^'"^l ^-'"well, a., Kin« . f '•Ut the way of I)c , "tUm il ' •"""'""'' ""'"""t' for hin, Mother. It\va., not o „•, 'll '^'-'"« /'«>-: His pcH,r ol.l have men Ju.l^ed h.n, ^ryweU 7'ST ' '"^ '''''''''' ' "''^ The French Revolution, the 'third irt' of i. 3 H« IP . . C.A./,. (•/../.. . Hssity r Hon . I'.J.tll. . Utt. . . Mhluht . E.-Corr. . L.I.. . . /..an,/ A/. . Koran . . C- Trans. . Sartor . . Tcut.Myth. AHHRKVIATIONS . (>n Hi-rlii|.. 4ml the H.rolc In IIMory. Six l^tures; H.'portfd with Kntendithuw and Addition*. Hy ThnMLiH Carlyk-. I.imd., 1841. . .Mhi|), and the Heroic in History. Six Leitur.n: Ri.,«)rtid with Knicndatlons and A.lditi.ms. Hy 'Ihonian Carlyle. Sicond Kdition. I.ond., iS^j. . On ll.riK-., H.ro.\Vnr),hlp, and tliu Htroic In History. Six r-fcturen: Kf,Hirt.d with Knwnd.itlon* and Additions. Ity Thonm Carlyli-. Tliird Edition. I.ond., 1.S46. . Thonw!* tarlylf. A History of tlio First l"rty V.-ars of I 111 I.lfi', b) iniis Anthony Iroiidu. a vols. I.ond., iSiji. ■rhonus Crlyli.. A lli.torv of HU Lift- in l.omlon, by Janws Anihonv Kroudo. 2 vols. I.ond., iSwi. . Critii.il .,,,,1 .Ml,nll.,noous Kss-iys: ClU'ttrd and Kepublishi-d by 'I li..in.is C.iilyl,.. 4 vols. Iloston, i.M.o. Ken.lnis,,na-s by I honias Cirlyl.^. Kijitud by Charlt's Kllof Norton. J vols. l.ond., I.S.S;. l:.irly I .tttTs of I hom.iH Carlyle, !Si4-i,Sjr,. Kdlted by Charles i;iiot Norton. I.ond., iS.Sr). . I.etf.rs of Thomas C.irlylf, i,S2r,-,,Sj6. Kdlted by Charles Kllot Norton. I.ond., i.S.S;. lb.- I. if- of I.ntlKr Written by llinistdf. ColU-ctud and Arranst-d by M. .Mil hilet. Tr.insLitud by Win. Il.izlitt. I..,nd., 184*,. ■riic Corrisix.ndfncc of Thomas Carlyl,. .md K.ilph Waldo i:niers.in. i.S,4-i,S;2. 2 vols. Iloston, i.S,,,,. I.ictuns on tlif History of l.lfer.itun.. Delivered by Thomas Carlyle, April to July, iSjS. Now I'rinted for tlu; I'irst Time. Kditfd, with I'refatu and Notes, by I'rof. J, Kcay Greene. I.ond., iS(;2. Lettirs and Memorials of J,,ne Welsh Carlyle. I'repared for ri.l>lication by -ihom.is Carlyle. ICdited by James Anthony ' Kroude. 3 vols. I.ond., 1.SS3. The Koran: Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed; Transl.i'.jd into Knglish . . . by GeorRe Sale, (Jent. A New V.C\>' I.ond., William TeRg, n.d. '.'"ales I., .vlnsaus. Tieck, Richfer. Translatetl fr.ini the German by Tliom.is Carlyle. 2 vols. I.ond., 1874. Carlyle, S.irtor Kes;irtus. Kdlted by Archibald MacMechan. Iloston, i.S<)(). Atliena-um I'ress Series. Teutonic Mytbolotv. l!y J.irob Grimm. Tr.-inslatid from the Fourth Edition b> James Steven SUllybrass. 4 vols. Lond.. 1882. ' NOTES LECTURE 1. THE HERO AS DIVINITY Park 1, Link 6 Hero-worihip. Hume makes uHe of thiM term. If he did not invent it. In dis. ussinj,' polytheism, he says. •• The same pnnciples naturally deify mortals superior in power, murage. ..r under- standmK, and produ.-, ■ ero-worship." II. mk. Xatural lluton- of Kthgton, Sect. iv. v. p. 144. Kciin.. 1S54. Cp. "The secnd opinion is. that their gods were simply their kings and heroes, whom they after- wards -eified." /../.. , ,. ..Is there .,ot .still in the worl "s demeanour towards (Ireat Men enough to make the old practice of Ihro-lVorship intelligible, nay significant .> " Essays, Goethe's Works, III. ifo. " I oy. alty. iJiscipleship. all that was ever meant hy //erc-lfors/ii/', lives perennially in the human bosom." Essays, Hos-wetVs L,/e of JoI.hsoh, 1 10 Universal History, etc. •' Hi-story is the essence of innumer- able Biographies." Essays, 0„ Jf,sto,u II. 231. Cp. i\ nwiiraPhy, III. 54, foot; and Heroes, n. 2 17 well with them. Adaptation of Matt. xvii. 4. 4 11 Surely it seems. Cp. infra, 6 I6 n. 4 33 mere quackery. Cp. "To tell fab-.u. stories of that kind does not seem a natural proce.^- in the d:l. ■,.n -if .science No man in such a case would have .^.r l„wn to ,, -ke out something which all the while he knew to be a lie ; no serious mai, would do it " L.L. II. 5 96 Turner's Account. Captain Samuel Turner. He reached Thibet just after the death of one lama and the installation of another a baby eighteen months old. See his Aaount of an F.p bassv to the Court of the Teshoo Lama in ThiM, cap. viii, pp. 310-316. ' I.ond., 1800. In H' this reads 'Hamilton's Travels into.' Kvidently Car- iyle had in mind : "An Account of the A'in^^Jom of AVA//, „„,/ of the terntortes annexed to this dominion by the House of Gorkka. By 293 i vi t .' 10 31 All was Godlike. " I look up to the starry sky, and an everlasting chain stretches thither, and over, and below; and all is Life, and Warmth, and Light, and all is Godlike or God." Quintus Fixlein, C.-Trans., end ; see Essays, Jean Paul l-riedrick Kic liter, I, 28. 11 1 Jean Paul. .See Carlyle's two appreciations, Essays, Jean Paul Priedrich Richter, I, 5 ; and Essays, Jean Paul Priedrich Pichter Again, II, 162. 11 la Sabeans. .See 55 an n. 11 24 window through which. - Rightly viewed no meanest object is insignificant ; all objects are as windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude itself." Sartor, Prospectne, 64 2. 12 1 Shekinah or Ark. A mistake. The Shekinah was \tot the Ark. but the glory that appeared upon it. 12 6 The true Shekinah. Ihe manifestation of God between the cherubim of the ark; see Num. vii, 89. A favorite phrase of Carlyle's (cp. Sartor, Pure Reason, 58 ly), which he may have got from Tristram Shandy, vol. V, cap. i (orig. ed.). I have found the idea but not the phrase in Chrysostom; see Sartor, 58 IK n. 12 » the mystery. Cp. "One forenoon, I was standing, a very young child, in the outer dour and looking leftwaul at the stack of the fuel-wood, — when, all at once, the internal vision, 'I am a me' [I :?: -i y*i 296 NOTES [Lecture I I l'.' 1* ■ 1 = -t i,:.i (iVA 3»« «'« fch), came like a flash from heaven before me." Richter, of himself; see Essays, Jean Paul Fritdrich Richter, II, 177. 12 13 but one Temple. An adaptation of i Cor. iii, 16, 17. Cp. Ncvalis Schriften, II, 126, Berlin, 1826; also Essays, Goethe's Works, III, 161; Essays, Novalis, II, 118; Sartor, Old Clothes, 217 15; and Heroes, 233 13, 18. 12 13 Novalis. See Carlyle's account, Essays, Novalis, II, 79. 13 3 Hero-worship. Cp. Essays, Goethe's Works, III, 160. 13 23 greatest of all. Cp. Sartor, Hdotage, 207 19-27. 14 s Kon-ning. This etymology, which Carlyle was fond of, is mis- taken. Cp. Sartor, Organic Filaments, 226 86 and n. From O.K. cynn, race, and ing, the patronymic ending, meaning ' a man of (noble) race.' Kluge. 14 8 representing gold. Cp. Heroes, 233 a; Essays, Goethe's Works, III, 164, top. 14 24 'account' for him. Cp. Essays, Signs of the Times, II, 154. ' Speak to any small man,' etc. 15 11 dead fuel . . . lightning. Cp. infra, 88 39. 15 98 History of the World. Cp. Heroes, i. 16 11 stifle him. Cp. Essays, Voltaire, II, 36; and ib., Goethe's Works, III, 162. 16 18 Persiflage. Carlyle dwells on this in his account of Voltaire. See Essays, Voltaire, II, 35, 44. 16 23 delivering Calases. Cp. Essays, Voltaire, II, 49 ; J. Mor- ley, Voltaire, V. 16 30 Queen Antoinette. See Carlyle, French Revolution, The Bastille, bk. ii, cap. iv, Maurepas. " Is not this, for example, our Patri- arch Voltaire, after long years of absence, revisiting Paris ? . . . Her majesty herself had some thought of sending for him, but was dis- suaded. Let majesty consider it, nevertheless. The purport of this man's existence has been to wither up and annihilate all whereon majesty and worship for the present rests ; and it is so that the world recognizes him." 16 31 Douanier. See Essays, Voltaire, II, 47. 17 1 tavern-waiters. See Essays, Voltaire, II, 47. This hap- pened at the tavern "Golden Cross "of Dijon, where Voltaire rested the first night of his journey to Paris. He was unaware of his wor- shippers' devotion. 17 9 Va bon train. See Essays, Voltaire, II, 47. 17 3 nucleus of a comet. See Essays, Voltaire, 1 1, 48. Lecture I] THE HERO AS DIVINITY 2y7 17 4 pluck a hair. See Essays, yoUaire, 11, so. Cp. Vea,l)eg a Imir of him for memory, And, flying mention it within their wills, Bequeathing it as a rich legacy. Unto their issue. Julius Ctesar, iii, i. 17 10 Pontiff of Encyclopedism. In view of the fpct that this phrase has been explained as " Reference to Johnson'.s Dictionary and •Johnsonese ' style." it may l.e well to note that it refers to Voltaire as the chief exponent of the sceptical philosophy, diffused by means of the Encyclopidie. 19 11 Samund. "From the end of the thirteenth century comes the earliest known copy of a collection, begun about the year i ^40, of old mythical, religious, and heroic songs and tales. . . . That earliest copy of them was a parchment book [Codex Re^-ius, Xo. 2.6; in Copenhagen), which was sent in ,063 from Iceland as a present f^om the Hishop Brynjulfr Sveins.son, of Skalhalt, to King Frederick III of Denmark. The bishop had discovered it in a farmhouse in 1C43 This work was ascribed to Sxmund .Sigfusson, who was priest, poet, and his- torian, had a share in forming the ecclesiastical code in Iceland, and died in the year 1135, a hundred years before the collection was made. t has been known, therefore, as .S.xmund's IMda, or the Klder, or the Poetical Edda." II. Mori.ky, EHf^lisli IV.iters, I, 273. 19 16 Edda. "Jacob Grimm traced the word ""lulda to a root 'azd. noble, with which he associated the Middle High (lerman'arf the Anglo-Saxon 'ord,' a point, and the Icelandic 'ois<-/t (wish), . . . perfection in whatever Icind, what we should call the Ideal." (;rimm. '/\„t. Mvth., I, 13S. Ix)nd., 1882. Cp. infra, 87 a». 21 28 Aegir. See S(cm. liJJ., Lokauinta : Uhland, Mytkus von Thor, /J Atgir. Eager. In Carlyle's article on Norfolk, in IJrewstir's Edinburgh Emychpadia, this phenomenon was noticed. " About the equinoxes in particular, and especially at the full moon of the autumnal one, it is liable to a species of flood, which, from its impetuosity, the inhabitants are accustomed to denominate an ea-er. The tide flows up the channel with extraordinary fury, overwhelming every obstacle and frequently causing extensive mischief; even the waterfowls shun it on such occasions." C.\ri.yi.f., M.mtaigne ami other Essays, 177. I.ond., 1S97. The regular tidal wave sweeping up the river is well known in Nova Scotia on the l!ay of Fundy side. The local name Is bore. Carlyle's later etymology, though endorsed by (Jrimm, is now given up. 23 1 brewing ale. The tale is told in two poems of the Klder Edda, Ilymiskvi&a and Lokasenna. of which loiulensed prose versions are given in Mallet, Northern Antiquities, 375. 23 5 ears of the Pot. literally, "and the ring-formed lugs sounded at his heels." S,rm. E,ld., I/ymiskriU'a, 34. Vigfusson notes the Icelandic comparison of a threatening sky to a pot turned upside down. .See Corpus Poeticiim Horcate, I, 514. 23 10 Creation. p. 404. 23 24 Igdrasil. p. 410. 23 29 Nomas. The Icelandic pi. of norti is nornir. Their names are UrSr, Ver^andi, and Skuld. .See Grimm, Tent. .Vyth., I, 405-417; and Mallet. Northern Antiquities, Prose Edda, 16, p. 4t2. 24 in infinite conjugation. " Understand it well, the Thing, that Thing is an Action, the product and expression of exerted force : the All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To do." C.\R- LYLE, The Erench Revolution, The Constitution, bk. iii, cap. i. 24 13 Ulfila. Or Vulfila, "wolfling," born 311, made bishop 341, L-ibored among the Goths until his death at Constantinople in 381, the tran.slator of the Bible into Gothic. 24 16 Machine. Possibly an allusion to suc'i works as Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, and certainly to the Utilitarian conception of the .See Mallet, Northern Antiquities, Prose Edda, 7, See Mallet, Northern Antiquities. Prose Edda, 1 5, m ■■'M i I '.I ' ,'i IJ h; i '4'. 300 l/OTKS [Lecture I universe. (J p. Kssavi, Si^'tis of tlie Times, II, 138 ; ih., Charactttistus, 111,46. 25 .10 sympathetic ink. A phra.s(; of Chalmers's, which struck Carlyle. Christianity was "all written in us already," he said, "as in symj alhelic ink ; Kii)le awakens it and you can read." Kei II, 73. Used also by Carlyle, Sartor, Pros/^cith-e, 68 ao. 26 16 Councils of Trebisond. A characteristic mannerism of Car lyle's is to pluralize proper names in ortler to avoid vagueness and to attain picturesque effect. Here Carlyle has slipped. There was no Council of Trebizond ; he may have had in mind Nicxa or Chalcedon 27 'J Heimskringla. " Ileimskringla, the world's circle, being the first word of the manuscript that catches the eye, has been quaintly used by the northern antiquaries to designate the work itself. . . . Snorro iiimself . . . calls his work the Saga or Story of the Kings of Norway." Lainc, Ifeimskringla, I, Prelim. Dissert. I. Lond., 1844. 27 2 Odin . . . Prince. " Odin was a great and very far travelled warrior, who cimquered many kingdoms, and so successful was he that in every battle the victory was on his side." Laing, Ileimskringla, I, 217. Lond. 1S44. This is now regarded as myth. 27 .1 Asen. Carlyle's bracketing this with Asiatics may mislead ; ' Ass' in O.N. means ' god,' pi. ' .Ksir.' See (Irimm, Tcut. Myth., I, 24 ; Mallet, Northern Antiquities, Glossary, j-Ksir, p. 546; Corpus Poeticiim Boreale, II, 515. Carlyle gives here the view formerly held by Norse scholars ; he is not solely responsible. 27 10 Saxo Grammaticus. Danish historian and poet, probably a native of Zealand who l)egan his great work Gesta Danorum about 1 185. It was a favorite book in the middle ages. From it we get the plot of Hamlet. 27 N Torfaeus. An Iceland scholar (d. 1719) who was first to rev_al the wealth of the saga literature to the world. 27 i-i Grimm . . . Wuotan. " It can scarcely be doubted that the word 's immediately derived from the verb O.W.Vt.watan wuot,i'i.'S. va&a, <'!& signifying meare, transmeare, cum impetu ferri, but not identical with Latin vadere." Grimm, Teut. Myth., I, 131. Lond., 1882. This etymology is now given up. 28 7 Lope. " Krey Lojje Felix de Vega, whose name has become universally a proverb for whatever is good," says Quevedo, in his Afro- bacion to Tome de Hurguillos (Obras Sueltas de Lope, Tom. XIX. p. xix). " It became a common proverb to praise a good thing by calling it a Lope ; so that jewels, diamonds, pictures, etc., were raised II Lecture I] THE HERO AS DIVINITY 301 into esteem by calling them his," says Montalvan (Obras Sueltas, Tom. XX, p. S3). Cervantes intimates the same thing in his tntrtmh, " La Guarda Cuidadosa." TicknoR, History of Sfanish Littraturt, II, 250 n. 31. N. v., 1849. 28 II Smith . . . Essay. "Consilerations Concerning the First Formation of Languages and the Different Genius of Original and Compounded Languages" is the title of this "Essay." See The Theory 0/ Moral Sentiments, etc., by Adam Smith, p. 510. Lond., 1861. 29 18 " Wuotan." See 27 aa n. 29 31 camera-obscura. " Let us suppose, for example, that the window-shutters of a chamber being closed, so as to exclude the light, a hole be made in them, in which a convex lens is inserted ; let a screen made of white paper be then placed at a distance from the lens, e( ual to its focal length, and at right angles to its axis ; a small picture will be seen upon the screen, representing the view facing the window to which the axis of the lens is directed ; this picture will be delineated in its proper colours, and all moving objects, such as carriages or pedes- trians, the smoke from the chimneys, and the clouds upon the sky, will be seen moving upon it with their proper motions. The picture, how- ever, will be inverted both vertically and laterally ; . . . this remarkable optical phenomenon was discovered in about the middle of the sixteenth century by Haptista-Porta.a Neapolitan philosopher." Lardner, .^aM x natural or acquired talent. In order to determine this, he desired one of the sol- diers who guarded him to write the name of God on the nail of his thumb. This he showed successively to several Spaniards, asking its meaning; and to his amazement they all, without hesitation, returned the same answer." Robertson, History of America, fll, 153 f. Lond., 1808. 31 38 Odin invented Poetry. " He spoke everything in rhyme, such as now composed, and which we call scald-craft. He and his temple gods were called song-smiths, for from them came that art of song into the northern countries." LAlNfi, Ilcimskringla, I, 221. 33 4 Wednesbury. " In England we find : IVoodneshoro" in Kent, near Sandwich ; IVedneshury and Weduesfield in Staffordshite." Grimm, Tent. Myth., I, 158. Stallybrass adds in a note that the num- ber might be swelled by looking up in a gazetteer the names beginning with Wans-, Wens-, etc. 33 19 way of thought. Cp. ante, 24 ai-aa. 33 ihi camera-obscura. See 29 ai n. 33 29 History of the world. Cp. ante, 1 ij. 35 27 said above. Cp. ante, 1 i»-2a. 36 7 Choosers of the Slain. Carlyle translates Valkyrs (val- kyrjor). " O.N. valr, A.S. wal, O.H.G. -wal, denotes the carnage c' the batdefield, the sum of the slain : to take possession of this val, to gather it in, was denominated kiosa, kiesen, to choose." Grimm, Teut. Myth., I, 417. See if>., 417-426 ; Mallet, A'orthern Antiquities, Prose Edda, 427. 37 a Snorro tells us. Unidentified. Lecture I] THE HERO AS DIVINITY 303 37 r. Old king!. See the .wa Imrial of Scyld Scefing in the open- ing of mowulf; and AV»v //„„„/•. Last HattU, in Lotd Uutterin's Letters f torn llij^h Lattltuhs, xii. 37 1& No Homer lang. A rLference to Vixere fortet ante ARaniemnona Multi; seel omnes ilLicrinvibiles IJrgentur igimticiue longa Nocte, carent quia vate sacro, HuK. r«r»«. IV, ly, 25-i8. 37 34 NorthUnd Sovereigns. "Olaf was soon joined by all who were discontented with the change r.f dynasty, an.i although his enemies tried to ridicule his proceedings l,y calling .him 'The Woodcutter' (Tretelgia), his colony grew into a petty state of some importance." .Mai.i.kt. Northern Auti,/uities, 86. See also I.aing. Ikimskrinela, 46-55- 38 S8 like a Banyan-tree. See Sartor, The World in Clothes, 34 31 n. 38 30 Cow AdumbU. See Mallet, Norther,, Autujuities, Prose EJiia, 403. 39 II Voluspa. The first three editions read //./rww,,/. a curious error. The Volus/a is translated almost completely by Professor Morley, Eni^lish IVnters, II, 337-355. Cp. 1,,/ra, 45 a n. 39 30 Gray'8 fragments. An interesting confirmation of Carlyle's view will be found in Dr. Vhe\p^'sSele.tlons/rom the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray, Introd. Appendix, Oray's Knowledge of Old Norse, by Prof. G. L. Kittredge. Cp. Corpus Poeticum Boreale, I, i8r, 259. 39 30 Thor ' draws . . . brows.' " It may readily be imagined how frightened the peasant was when he saw Thor knit his brows, and grasp the handle of his mallet with such force that the joints of his fingers became white from the exertion." Mai-LKT, Northern Antiqui- ties, Prose Edda, 436. 40 I Balder. See Mallet, Northern Antiquities, Prose Edda 22 p. 417- 40 4 Hermoder. Icelandic, //ermo&r. See Mallet, Northern Antiq- uities, Prose Edda, 49, p. 446; and Sum. Edd.. l^luspd, 32-34; ib., Baldrs Draumar. 40 15 thimble. Another curious slip. •' Vanna also sent Frigga a linen cassock and other gifts, and to Ku.la a gold finger-ring." Mali.et, Northern Antiquities, Prose Edda, 49, p. 449. 1-' U h n I { 3(H xorKs [I.EtTURr. I 40 ill UhUnd . . . Euay. /Vr Mylhin van nor {t^yb), UhlanJi Gtsam. Werkt, III. Stuttgart (n /«»«. »V'/«m« with O.K toten, eten, M.K. etin, ttten,eti., and thinks it may Ik; derived from ( ».\ tia ; giant is then equivalent to Tolyphagos. See J. Jacobs, Englis) Fairy- Tales, Red Ettin, and /(*., Xotes and Keferenees, 24 5. 41 *J Hamlet. For a good note on this siil)ject, -see I. Gollanc/ Hamlet (Temple ed.), xiv f. See also his Hamlet in Iceland. Lond. 1898. 42 1.'. Thor's expeditions. For the complete tale, see Mallet Northern Antii/uities, Prose Eddii, 43-4.S, pp. 435-444. 42 :ii Skrymir. Cp. ante, 42 i.'> n. 43 ao strain your neck. " Thor and his companion.-* proceeded 01 their way, and towards noon descried a city standing in the middle o a plain. It was so lofty that they were obliged to bend their neck quite back on their shoulders ere they could .see to the top of it. Mallet, Northern Antiipiities, Prose Edda, 46, p. 439. 44 24 Mimer-stithy. (Irimm connects this word with L. memoi Mimir was the owner of the well of wisdom under the roo's of \'ggdra>i " He is full of wi.sdom, because he drinks the waters ot the well fror the horn (Ijoll every morning." Carlyle takes him as the represent; tive of Norse wisdom. I can find no connection with 'stithy ' ; Volundi the ' Wayland Smith ' of Kenilworth, was the Norse Tubal Cain. 44 .Ti American Backwoods. A "da-hing Kentuckian" informe Harriet Martineau that .\merican soil was so rich, that if you planted nail at night, it tame up a spike next muriiiiig. " Tiie quality of e.\a^ geration has often been remarked on as typical of American characte Lv.cii;KK I] TV/A Ui:i ' .IS DUIMTY 305 and eHpftially of Americuii humor In Dr. iVlri's ln< sun , nnu would l)c t> iiipted lo tliink the (Ireani of tdliimliu.H half fulrilln!. and that KuroiH! had fiiund in the Wtist a ntart-r wa) to ( (rii-ntalisni, at least in dii tion. Hut it seemn to nv lh.it a j,Me.U deal nf what is set (hnvn a-* mere extravagance is mnrelitly to'' tailed intensity and pii turev|uene.ss, !tomH of the Imaginative fai ,..., in full heallh and stronnth. thou 'i producing as yet only the new and formless material in which [Mietry i» to work." l,ii\VKI.I,, /■'/s'/.'M' /'//<•;. 1, S,; ,1)/,/ X I i,-t, Itilioiliutii'ii. 44 U3 Sagnarok. tirimm derives this word erroneously from raginrath, council, and rok, li'kr. darkaess : N. /vr/r ((l. Kaucli, Kng. reek, rack), thus making it e(|uivalent to ti.fnuula deomm, (lotter- dammerung, Twilight of the (Jods. See Mallet, Xirt/ient A>iti;. 7//i/'//«r;/M especially 215 i>T. 45 94 'ting Olaf. See Vi{,'fuss..n, Stnrliiii^a Xi-,,, /',ol,xomi;M, I, Ixxxvii. The story is found not in //,im>k-i im^lit, hut in Odd the Monk's version of the saga of < »laf Tiynvassoii (;/.'/ of ( ,iaf the Saint), (irimm, Teut. Myth., f, cap. Iv, 177. -It li.ippenid once when King Olaf was sailing pa.st the shores, and he hiins.jf .sat heside the tiller, ihat a man standing on a certain rock tailed out to iliein sailing past, begging that the King would not disdain to give him a plan- in the ship. When the King heard this, he stiend th< ,hip to wIumc the man stood ; and when that was done, he got into the sliii) He ho.istcd griit like this. Carlyte antkipfttet objection* (uch a» Mr. It. I). Traill o\iw% in his Introduc- tion to the Centenary edition of J/troti, \x. 49 w •uch recaption, (p. /»//>,/, 193 a. 216 ai ; and alito "And ihit was he for wh«im the world foi.nd no fitter ImstincM than (|uarrelling with imugglers and vintnern, computing exrisf . N'emiM.', qux aut arte humana facile possunt etfecta reddi, ut de columba ad aurem advolante." H. (Ikotm s, De I'erit. Reli),'. Christ., lib. vi, cap. v. 51 I Age of Scepticism. This is Carlyle's usual name for the eighteenth centuiy. It has this meaning in his course of lectures on literature in i8j8. 51 13 Cagliostro. fluiseppe Ralsamo (i743-r705). See Carlyle, Count Cagliostro (Essay.', Ill, 330), for a most interesting account of this .swindlnr. It appeared in Fraser's Mai;azine, 1S33. 51 99 Mirabeau. For a full account, see Essays, Mirabeau, IV, 85. 308 NOTES n.ECTURE II I «<■ 5f 52 9 in a vain show. See Ps. xxxix, 6. f'p. iu/ra, 84 9. 52 29 inspiration of the Almighty. See Job xxxii, 8. 52 :ti Mahomet . . . Inanity. " I gave them to know that the poor Arab had points al)out him which it were good for all of them to imitate ; that probably t/iiv were more of (juacks than he ; that, in sliort, it was altogether a new kind of thing they were hearing to-day." Carlyle's letter to his mother. C.L.L. I, lyj. Cp. infra, 61 1 n. 53 II according to God's own heart. The phrase is " after mine own heart." See I Sam. xiii, 14, and .Vets xiii, 22. 53 yj man that walketh. See Jer. x, 23. 54 :) ' succession of falls.' ("p. tlic |)itl)nl(l miscellany, man. Bursts i)f great heart and slips in sensual niirc. 'I'bnnyson, Tlie J'rincess, V. 54 26 Heaven with its stars. For the same contrast, cp. The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm ; Tlie nijjht in lier silence, The stars in their calm. M. Arnold, A">«/c>\iit, /'itHhi. Discourse, I. 55 till Sabeans. '-This sect say they took the name of Sabians from the above-mentioned Sabi, though it seems rather to be derived from . . . Saba or the iiost of heaven, which they worship. . . . The idolatry of the Arabs then, as .Sabians, chiefly consisted in worship- ping tile fixed stars and planets, and the angels and their images, \\ ■•■'h they honoured as inferior (lsttodtun!f), had been happily accomplished : and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved." Sartor, J'he Everlasting Yea, iCx). "The true philosophical Act is annihilation Lecture II] THE HERO AS PROPHET i\\ of self {SclhtmtHux) : this is the real beginning of all Thilosophy. all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither." Sayim: of Novahs, translated by Carlyle. Essays, A\walis, II, ,,8 66 au inspiration of the Almighty. See Job xxxii, 8 66 1 Is not Belief. "Can Miracles work Conviction? Or is not real Conviction, this highest function of our soul and personality, the only true God-announcing Miracle ? " Essays, A^ovalis, II m r 66 2 Novalis. Pseudonym of Friedrich von Ilardeiiberg (,77.- kSoi). See Carlyle's appreciation. Essays, II, 79-134 66 16 It is certain. -Es ist gewiss.' dass eine Meinung sehr viel gewinnt sobald ich weiss, dass irgend jemand davon iiberzeugt ist, sie wahrhaft annimmt." Ncalis Schrifte»,\\,,o^. Kerl.. ,S.<,. Quoted 2\^o Sartor Resartus, 194, 28, and Essays, Characteristics, III. 1 = 66 19 the good Kadijah. See Irving. Mohammed and //is Sue t-ssors, cap. XV, end. 67 « young Ali. Sale quotes this story as fact in his Preliminary Discourse. Sect. ii. and .so does (libbon, but later authorities do not lend .t their support. "The stories also of the Prophet taking his stand upon Mount Safa, .summoning his relatives, family by family and addressing to them the divine message; ... of the miraculous dinner at which Mahomet propounded his claim to his relatives. Ali alone standing forth as his champion and ' Vizier.' etc.. are all apocryphal." MuiK, Z// n. 75 I.-. Prideaux. Humphrey I'ridiau.x (\(^i,%-iTi\), Orientalist, author of polemical tract against the Deists, " The True Nature of Imposture fully display'd in the life of Mahomet," etc.. 1697 ; often since reprinted. See Diet. Nat. lUog. I'rideaux's letters were printed in the publications of the Camden Society. For his criticism of the Koran, see Ihe True Nature, etc., 53 ('jd ed.). I.ond., 1698. 77 11 He returns forever ... Hud. Sura 11 is entitled Hud. This prophet is mentioned in suras 7 and ir. "Unto every nation //(//// an ai)ostle been sent." Sura 10. 78 7 Mahomet ... no miracles. C]). " Signs are in the power of (;f)i> alone ; and I am //,- mure than a public preacher." Koran, sura 29. " Unless ... an angel cor e with him, to bear witness unto him, we 'Mill not believe. Verily, thou art a i)reacher only ; and God is the gov- ernor of all things." //-., sura 11. " The infidels say, Unl-.-ss a sign be sent down unto him from his I,' LKCTtTRK II] T/IE IlEKO AS PROPHET 315 I Then at intervals: • Kternity in Paradise ! ' - ' Pardon ! ' < Ves; the blessed companionship on high ! ' He stretched himself gently. Then all was still •' M,. , R. Lip of Mahom.% cap. xxxiii. pp. joS f. I.ond.. ,878. 82 14 lost his Daughter, /einab. Muir records no sayings on this event. ' to!h \I" !V^'*'^'- •''^"^ ''"^' ^'^' "-^ ^^''^'-"' "p- "vii. l.ond., i»78 ; and Aonut, 154 n. , ,- and »/., 164 n. e,/, h 82 33 Seld'8 daughter. -He then went to the house of Zeid- and .ds little daughter rushed into his arms, crying bitterly! Mahomet was overcome, and wept until he sobbed aloud. A bystander, thinking to check his grief, said to him: 'Why is this Prophet ? • . This,' he replied, 'is but the fond yearning in the heart' of fnend for fnend.- Mi„r, /,/. of Mahcnet, cap. xxui, p. 4,0. I^nd., 1878. 82 ^ three drachms. "If there be any man," said the apostle rom the pulp.t," whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of humiliation. . . . Has any one been despoiled of h.s goods .» the little that I possess shall compensate the principal and interest of the debt." _" Ves." replied a voice in the crowd, "lam entitled to three drachms of silver." Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and thanked his creditor for accusing him in this worid rather than at the day of judgment. Gibbon, Dedint and Fall cap. 1. ' 83 a Kadijah. Cp. ante, 66 19 n. 83 24 your harvest. Unidentified. 83 26 Hell will be hotter. Cp. "They who were left at home n, 'In- cxpahtion of TaMc, were glad of their staying behind the apostle of God, and were unwilling to employ their sub.stance and their per- sons for the advancement of Goi.'s true religion; and they said, Go not forth in the heat. Say, the fire of hell will be hotter' if they understood t/iis." A'oran, sura 9. 83 29 weighed-out to you. Cp. " We wil! appoint just balances for the day or resurrection ; neither shall any soul be injured at all : although the merit or guilt of an action be of the weight of a grain of mustard-seed only, we will produce it publicly ; and there will be sufficient accountants with us." Koran, sura 21. 84 a Assuredly. See Koran, sura 75, p. 473; sura 82, p. 482 • sura 83, p. 483. 84 t> ' living in a vain show.' Cp. ante, 52 9 n. 84 25 revenge yourself. " Neither slay the soul which God has I n Ill 316 NOTES [Lkctitrf. II (! r ! forbidden you to tiny, unless for a just canst ; and whosoever shall lie slain unjustly, we have given his heir power to demand satisfattion ; but let him not exceed the bounds of modtration in f' . death Iht mnrderer in too cruel a manner, or by reveiigifii^ his j Nood on at • other than the person who killed him ; since he is assisted iy this law." Koran, sura 17, p. 230. 84 31 giring alma. " Alms according to the prescriptions of the Mohammedan law are to be given of five things. \. Of cattle, that is to say, of camels, kine, and sheep. 2. Of money. 3. Of com. 4. Of fruits, viz., dates and raisins. And 5. Of wares sold. Of each of these a certain portion is to be given in alms, being usually one part in forty, or two and a half per cent of the value." Sai.k, Prelim. Dis- course, Sect. iv. (iibbon is the authority for the " tenth." I do not find it in the Koran. See Decline and Fall, tap. 1. 86 5 Paradise . . . Hell sensiul. For Paradise, see Koran, sura 2, p. 4, etc., and especially sura 47, p. 411 ; sura 52, p. 425 ; sura 55, p. 434 ; sura 56, p. 435; sura 76, p. 475; and also for Hell, ib., sura 4, p. 67;/«ra 7, p. 119; sura 14, p. 206; ib., p. 20()\ sura 22, p. 275; sura 43, p. 401 ; sura 44, p. 404 ; siira 47, p. 41 1 ; sura 88, p. 487. 86 13 highest joys . . . spiritual. " Oon promiseth unto the true believers, both men and women, gardens through which rivers flow, wherein they shall remain for ever ; and delicious dwellings in the gar- dens of perpetual abode : but good will from God shall be their most excellent reward." Koran, sura 9. 85 16 salutation . . . Peace. " Hut as to those who believe, and work righteousness, their Lord will direct them l)ecause of their faith; they shall have rivers flowing through gardens of pleasure. Their prayer therein shall be. Praise be unto thee O God ! and their saluta- tion therein shall be Peace ! " Koran, sura 10, p. 166. Cp. ib., sura 14, p. 207 ; sura 33, p. 347 ; sura 56, p. 43S ; '/'•- P- •137- " Peace is what all desire, but all do not care for the things that pertain unto true peace." Thomas a Kempis, /mit., lib. iii, cap. xxv. 85 19 all grudges. ' And we will remove all grudges from their minds." A'oran, sura 7, p. 119. " The angels shall say unto them, Knter ye therein in peace and security, and we will remove all grudges from their breasts ; they shall he as brethren, sitting over against one another on couches." /b., sura 1 5, p. 212. 85 31 "We require" . . . master. This quotation in this form I have not been al>!e tr> hunt down ; the nearest approach to it is in Meister's visit to the Educational Province. He observes that the Lecturr III] THE HEKO AS POET 317 dress of the pupils varies, apparently without reason. " Wilheim in- quired the reason of this seeming contradiction. ' It will be explained,' said the other, ' when I tell you, that l>y this means we endeavour to find out the children's several characters. With all our ^'eneral Mrict- ness and regularity, we allow in this point a certain latitude of choice.' " MiUttr's Travels, xi. p. 215. I.ond., 1868. The thought seems to have undergone with time, a process of sublimstion in the crucible of Cariyle's brain. The translation of Meistcr lay sixteen years behind him. 88 8 Month Ramadhan. The Mohammedan Lent. "The month of Ramadan shall ye Just, in which the Koran was sent down from heavenr Koran, sura 2, p. 22. On account of the Mohammedan year being the lunar year, this fast comes at different sea.sons. See Muir, Life of ATahomet, 201. I.ond., 1878. 87 14 Benthamee Utility. This reference produc-d a mild scene. " The onslaught on lienthaiiiism in ' Hero-Worship,' which as Carlyle pronounced the word "beggarlier" brought Mill to his feet with an emphatic No!" Oarnkit, Carlyle, p. 171. Great Writers Series. Cp. Cariyle's apology, infra, 198 11-199 1-6. 87 34 God Wish. Cp. ante, 21 -M n. 88 14 Arabia first became alive. Carlyle says the same of Scot- land. See infra, 166 3-,'-167 l-ya. 8829 lightmng out Of Heaven. C p. «.//.-, 15 T-as. nl LECTURK III. THE HERO AS I'OET 90 17 Napoleon has words, (p. infra, 160 U. " Kichter says of Luther's words, ' his words are half-battles,' " and n. 90 19 things Turenne says. I have not been aliie to find any of his mots. 91 :. as Addison complains. I'nidentified. 91 30 Vates. Cp. " Xevertheless, taking up the rhararter of Vates in its widest sense, Werner earnestly desires not only to he a jHiet but a prophet." Essays, Life and Writini^s of Werner, I, \i\. 91 3.1 the open secret. The nearest approach to this ciuotation I found in Wilheim Meister's Travels, xiii, 2t,-j (I.ond.. i.S(kS): "While Nature unfolded the open secret of her l)eauty." It was a favorite phrase of Cariyle's. Cp. infa, 132 2(1. 187 JT ; /•.w,,. .r. State of German Literature, T, 45; ih., Goethe, I, 23:; ; ib., Jean Paidl'ricdiieh L'ic/iler, II, •97; it; Goethe's Death, III, 148. ■'Hi I I i ! ii! 11 31S NOTES [LKintlKK III % Iff III 91 99 the Oirlne Idea. "The whole material world, with all it.s adaptations and ends, and in particular the life of man in this world are by no means, in themsulvus and in deed and truth, that which thty seem to be to the uncultivated and natural sense of man ; but there is something hight-r, which lies concealed behind all natural appearance. This concealed foundation of all appearance may, in its (greatest univL-rsality, be aptly named the Divine / the Satirist. Carlyle himself; see, for the same idea ex panded, Siirtoi; Xtitural Sii/: imagination that shudders. Cailylc (juotes from himself. "The feelings, the gifts that exist in the I'oet, are tho.se that exist, with more or less development, in every human soul ; the imagination, whicii shudders at the Hell of Dante, is the same faculty, wt^iker in degree, whicli called tiiat picture into being." /•Assays, lUtrns, I, 285. 93 L*u Saxo Grammaticus. (p. ., Gotlht's nWks, III, 164; l.ockhait, l.ife ,>f /{„,„<, n -o l.ond.. 1828. 98 11 Portrait . . , Giotto. .Vot to he confounded with what is generally known as the Ciotto portrait of Dante, as a young man, dis- covereil in i8.}o, the year these le. tures were giv. n. under the whitewash on a wall of the chapel of the palace of the I'odtsta at Florence. The ordinary portraits are taken from the death mask. whi. h Professor .Norton is inclined to consider jienuine. .See Longfelhiw, /hint,' 's Diviiie Comedy, I, 350. C'arlyle has made a slip here. 99 8 ten silent centuries. Cp. in/,,,, 100 so. 99 9 mystiw unfathomable song < p. /;//><;, 102 r. Ouoted from Carlyle's translation of Tiei k's opinion of Novalis. •• I le. al.me among the moderns, resembles the lofty Dante; and sings us. like him. an unfathomable, mystic song." F.ts.ivu A'.'t;i/is, 11, 13.'. 100 ;t graceful affecting account. The famous I'/f,, Xu,^,i : Car- lyle does not err here, in the way of overpraise. 100 16 Podesti. From June 15 to August 15, 1300. Dante was one of the st.\ Priors by election. 'I'odesta' was the term applied to another otTicer in the complicated system of civic government at Florence. 101 5 record . . . Archives. Dated March 10, 1302. With Dante are included fourteen others. •• There is still to be seen an act of that trnie in the an hives of Florence, charging all magistrates to burn Dante alive when he should be taken, such vehement hatred had they con- ceived against him." /,./,. .S (. 101 lu milder proposal. .Sonne not found. 101 17 How hard. ■».!, m 3»'-i ^\ f\ if i i f 5 ' I A'OTES [Lkcturk III Tu provtml tl cnnw rw di sale l.o pane altriil, e com' t diiro calk) I.O Mendere el lalir per I' altriil shaW. l'»r»Jit«, ivil, %% l(. Quoted also, F.ttnys, Afirahtau, IV, 102. 101 91 Can d«IU 8c«U. ThiM incide.tt U mentlonml in Haylc, art. %»//, and Tetrarch's Ktrnm Memorandarum, lib. iv, is given as authority. " Krant in eodum cunvictu hiittrioneii ac nebulones omnis generi», ut mos est, quorum unu» procaciMimu* oliiiccrnia verbi.H ac gt-- ■tibui, multuni apud omnes loci «t gratia: tenebat. Quod moleste ferre Dantem aunpicatus Cania, producto illo in medium, & magnis laudibus concelebrato, versus in Dantem : Miror, inquit, quid causx lubtit, cur hie cum sit domens, nobis tamcn omnibus placere novit, & ab omni- bus diligitur, quod tu qui sapiens diceris non potes .> Ille autem : Minimi-, inquit, mirareris, si noss"s quod morum paritas & ». nilitudo animorum amicitia- causa est." 102 !J9 Malebolge. Literally •• Kvil wallets." Panle gives this name to the divisions of the eighth circle, on account of their narrow, deep shape. Here the fraudulent are punished. I.uogo t in inferno, dctto Malebolge. iH/erno, xvUi, i. 102 33 alti giui. Literally "deep groan.s" heard by Dante on his first entranct into 'h'- " citta dolente " ; not said specifically, of M,iU- Mgt. Qulvi sospiri.piantic'd aiti guai Kinonavan piT 1' aer senza stelle. Inferno, iil, ii (. 102 3H 103 u to Dante, astrology. unfathomable song. C'p. ante, 99 9 n. If thou follow. The beginning of llrunetto Latini's speech Latini was Dante's schoolmaster and addicted to judicial Se tu segui tua Stella Non puui fallire a gloriosu porto. iH/trno, XV, 55. Cp. " His old schoolmaster tells him : ' If thou follow thy star, thou canst not miss a happy harbour.' That was just it. That star occa sionally shone on him from the blue eternal depths; and he felt he was doing something good ; hut he soon lost it again as he fell hack into thi trough of the sea, and iiad to journey on as before." L.L. 92. Lecturk III] TltR IIEKO AS POST 321 lOS • BUdf OM iMB. S« nui contlnga che it poeni.i Mrro A I qu»k- ha posti. nuno e ciein « terra Si chc m' li.t fatti. ptr piii .iiinl maim, Vinci U crmlvllX I'ariiJiio, \\\, i-j 103 ift Hie cUudor DantM. Part of the epitaph Dann- tomponed for hiniMlf ; carvcii in iiiicialii on his lomli .ii Ka\i.iin.i Jur» miinarchia-, supcrox, phli-|{etont,i, I.kumiuu l.iistrnndii n-cini, vuluvrunt f.ita (|in.iis(|uc; S«l quia |nrt ressit mt'lliirilmi hospit.i caittris, Auctnrfiii(|iie Aiium petiit, fehiinr astris Hie claudor Dantht-s patrii'* txtorris ab oris, Qut-m genuit parvi llurriitii mat.r aiiiDrli. I!avi.«, nUtioHtiry, i.v., II, vu, .1. n.itei. Hayle given as authority Poctiantius*, DtScrifl. flonnt.,^^. 45, 46, and also PauluH Jovius, Kloi;., y. 103 JO unfathomable Song. C'p. nnu, 99 u n. 103 'J I Coleridge remarks, rnidentifitd. 104 93 canto fermo. " I'lie mtU.dy which remains firm to its original shape, while the parts around it are varying with tlie counter- point." (iRuVK, Diit. Musi,, I, 306. 104 'M makes it musical. I'p. iinu, 94 •.>» i,. 106 3 sincerest of poems. < oMiiJarc however, Kuskin's opinion, Sis,ime and l.ihes, I'lu MysUiy iiine Comoiu, /iitttii/iiitti'ii, I.jj. I'aris, iNSj. kossetti translates Moccaccio's Memoir: •• His complexion was brown ; his hair and l)e.ird thick, black and crisp ; and ah\ay>. his counttiiancu melancholy and thoughtful. \VhereI)y it happed one day in \i ron.i, the fame of his works being already noised everywhcr.', and diiefly of that part of his Comedy which he enitles Hell, and lie bring known l)y many men and women, he passing before a door whereat several women were sitting, one of them in under tone, but still well heard by him and such as were with him, said to the other women : ' Sec y^' him who goes through hell, and returns when he lists, and brings up hither news of those who are down there .> ' Wliereto one of them replied in her sim- phcity : 'Of a truth, thou must say true. Seest not how he has his beard shrivelled up, and his complexion brown, through the heat and m ) '■ 1;1 it 322 NOTES [Lecture III the smoke which are there below ? ' Which words hearing said behind him, and knowing that they came from pure credence in the women, he pleased and as it were content that they should be in such belief, some what smiling, passed on." W. M. Kosski n, The Comedy of Dante AtighieriJ'art I. The I hi I, Trauslatedinto lUank Verse. Biographical Memorandum, xii, f. Loud., 1865. 105 17 perfect through suffering. See Ileb. ii, 10. 106 9 red pinnacle. Literally " mosques," " vermilion." Ed io : Maestro, gi.'l lu sue meschite Li entro certo nella valle cerno Verniiglie, come se di foco uscite Fossero. In/crtio, viii, 70-73. Dr. John Carlyle notices them in his translation, Introduction, xxxiii. N. v., 1849. 106 19 Plutus . . . collapses. Quali dal vento le Ronfiatc vele CaR^iono avvolte, poiche I'alber fiacca; Tal cadde a terra Li fiera crudele. In/erno, vii, 13-15. 106 21 Brunetto Latini. The first three editions read ' Sordello.' Ed io, quando "1 suo braccio a me distese, Ficcai gli occhi per Io cotto asiK'tto. In/erno, xv, 26 (. Cp. " Among these he sees his old schoolmaster who taught him gram mar, he winks at him in the manner de.scrilied, but he is so burnt that Dante can hardly recognise him." /,./. 89. 106 as fiery snow. .Sovra tutto 11 sabbion d' un cader lento Piovean di fuoco dilatate faide Come di neve in alpe senza vento. hiferno, xiv, 28-30. Cp. "It brings one home to the subject; there is much reality in this similitude. .So his description of the place they were in. Flakes of fire came down like snow, falling on the skin of the people, and burn ing i.iem black !" /./.. 89. 106 35 those Tombs. See fnjerno, ix, 112-x, i-iS. Cp. "The description is striking of the sarcophagu.ses in which these people are LKcnrRK IIIJ THE I/EA'O AS I'OET 323 i i -z enclosed, ' more or less heated,' ... the lids are to I.e kept ..pen till the last day, and are then to be sealed down for ever." /../.. 91. 106 28 how Farinata rises. .See In/crno, x, 22-51. especially 1. 35 f. " And he dre- ■ isp his head and chest, as if he had Hell in great disdain." V-,. " w ., „,ust not omit Farinata, the heautiful illus tration of a char.- -.tor mu. h £,.,„!,: in Dante. Me is confined in the hlack dome whcr. thr heretic.., <, .ell ... He hears Dante speaking in the Tuscan dial. l. ,.nd he ac osts him. Me is a man of great haughtiness (gran disfitto, .,./„v/,w). This spirit of defiance of suffering, so remarkal.le in .llschylus, occurs tw.. or three times in 1 )ante. Farinata asks him, ' What news of Florence .> ' For in all his long exile Dante himself thinks continually of Florence, which he loves .so well, and he makes even those in torment anxious after what is doing in Florence." L.I.. 91. 106 an how Cavalcante falls. Carlyk's memory plays him false here. See fnjhno, x, 5J-72. The significant lines are: " Forse cui Cuido vo.stro el)l,e a disdegno," 1. 6;„ and " Come Dicesti : egli elihe.!- non viv' egli ancora .' " II. 67 f. In the lectures of iSjS, Carlyle remeni- I.ers the exact word. "Then Cavalcanti asks Dante why he is there, and not his son. Where is he .> .\nd Dante replies that perhaps hj had disdain for Virgil. //„,/.? C-avakanti asks (/•/./„) : ' Does he not live then ? ' And, as 1 )ante pauses a little without replying, he plunges down and Dante sees him no more ! " /,./,. 91 f. 107 24 the eye seeing. Unidentified. 108 2 Francesca and her Lover. .Ste Jnfirno, v, 80-142. C'p. "There are many of his greatest qualities in the celebrated passage about Francesca, whom he finds in the cir.le of Inferno appropriated to those who had erred in love. I many times s.iy 1 know nowhere of a more striking passage ; if any one would .select a passage character- i^itic of a great man, let him study that. It is as tender as the voice of mothers, fall of the gei-tlest pity, though there is much stern tragedy in it. It is very touching. In a place without light, which groaned like a stormy sea, he .sees two shadows which he wishes to speak to, and they come to him. He compares them to doves whose wings are open and not fluttering. Francesca, one of these, utters her complaint, which does not occupy twenty lines, though it is such an one that a man may write a thousand lines about it and not d„ ill. It .ont.iins beautiful touches of human weakness. .She feels that stern justice encircles her all around. 'Oh, living creature.' she .says, 'who hast 1 ..me so kindly to visit us, if the Creator of the World ' (poor Francesca ! she knew ■ * i I 5» P 1 1 -J if 324 NOTES [Lecture III that she had sinned against His inexorable justice) ' were our friend, we would pray Him for thy peace ! ' Love, which soon teaches itself to a gentle heart, inspired her Paolo (beautiful womanly feeling that). ' Love forbids that the person loved sliall not love in return.' And so she loved Paolo. 'Caina awaits him who destroyed our life,' she adds with female vehemence. Then in three lines she tells the story how they fell in love. ' We read one day of Lancelot, how love possessed him : we were alone, we regarded one another ; when we read of that laughing kiss, he, trembling, kissed me ! Tiiat day,' she adds, 'we read no further ! ' " The whole is beautiful, like a clear piping voice heard in the middle of a whirlwind : it is so sweet and gentle and good." L.L. 89 f. 108 :> della bella persona. " Love . . . took him with the fair body of which I was bereft"; Literally: "Which was taken from me; and in a way that continues to afiiict me." l>r. Carlyle's Translation, p. 61 and n. X. V., 1849. The reading of II ' ' qiiesta foiina ' is not found in the passage ; it is apparently due to Carlyle's imperfect recollection of the Italian. 108 7 he will never part. " Questi, che mai da me non fia diviso." Inferno, v, 135. 108 8 alti guai. See 102 -2:1 n. 108 9 aer bruno. I iterally " the brown air." Inferno, ii, i. 108 i(i terrestrial libel. Cp. " This, too, is an answer to a criticism against Dante, and a paltry criticism it is. Some have regarded the poem as a kind of satire upon his enemies, on whom he revenged him self by putting them into hell. Now nothing is more unworthy of Dante than such a theory. If he had been of such an ignoble nature, he could never have written the Divina Commedia. It was written in the purest spirit of justice." L.L. 90 f. 109 10 A Dio spiacenti. These three famous lines relating to the angels which were not rebellious and were not for (Jod, but for them- selves, occur close together; see Inferno, iii, 63, 51, 46. Carlylc grouped them in 1837, in his essay on Mirabeau. " Satan himself, according to Dante, was a prai.seworthy object, compared with those jtiste-milicii angels (so over-numerous in times like ours) who ' wen- neither faithful nor rebellious,' but were for their little selves only ; trimmers, moderates, plausible persons, who, in the Dantean Hell, are found doomed to this frightful penalty, that ' they have not the hope to die (non han speranza di morte),' but sunk in torpid death-life, in muii Lecture III] THE HERO AS POET 325 and the pla.' ue of flies, they are to doze and dree forever, — ' hateful to God and to ihe Enemies of God ' : ' Non ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa ! ' " Estays, Mirateau, iv, 91. In 1835, Carlyle and his wife were both studying Italian. Cp. " We had a great burst of bravura together over that class of Damned Souls in Dante, A Dio spiacenti ed a" nemici sui, precisely 'the respectable people' of this present generation of the world 1 Dante says, non hanno speranza di morte, they have not the hojie to die ! A grand old Puritan this Dante ; depth and ferocity without limit ; implacable, com- posed ; as if covered with winter and ice, and like Hecla, his interior is molten fire ! " Lett. 553. 109 13 Non ragionam. Cp. "These of whom he speaks were a kind of trimmers ; men that had not even the merit to join with the devil." He adds: ' A'on ragionam di lor, ma guarda e passa ." — ' Let us say nothing of them, but look and pass ! ' L.L. 86. 109 15 non han speranza. Cp. '• That is a fine thing which he says of those in a .state of despair, ' They have not the Hope to die ' 'Non hanno speranza di morte!" What an idea that is in Dante's mind there of death ! To most persons death is the dreaded being, the king of terrors, Ljt to Dante to be imprisoned for ever in a miserable complexity, without hope of release, is the most terrible of things 1 Indeed, I belie- withstanding the horror of death, no human crea- ture but would , 1 be the most dreadful doom not to l)e suffered to die, though . .aid be decreed to enjoy all youth and bloom immortally ! For there is a boundlessness, an endless longing, in the breast, which aspires to another world than this." L.L. SG. 109 18 that Destiny itself. Unidentified. 109 33 I do not agree. Carlyle had stated this opinion before in Ills lectures of 1838. Cp. "The 'Inferno' has liecome of late times, mainly the favourite of the three divisions of Dante's great poem. It has harmonised well with the taste of the last thirty or forty years, in which Europe ha- e°med to covet more a violence of emotion and a strength of convi i.-,ion than almost any other quality. It is no doubt a great thing ; but to my mind the ' Purgatorio ' is excellent also, and I question even whether it is not a better and a greater thing on the whole." Z.Z. 93. 109 .11 tremolar dell' onde. Again Carlyle trusts his memory and misquotes. The phrase occurs in J'urgatorio, i, 117: " The dawn Hi i26 NOTES II.kchkk III conquered the morning hour, which fled before it, so that afar off I recognized the treml)ling of the sea." Cp. " Very touching is that gen- tle patience, that unspeaivable thankfulness with which the souls e.xpia their release after thousands of years. Cato is keeping the gate. That is a beautiful dawn of morning. The dawn drove away the darkness westward, with a quivering of the sea on the horizon. W ' Si the di lontano Conobbi al tiuniolar duUa marina.' ■ ** 1 i iff '( He seems to seize the word for it. .Anybody who has seen the sun rise at sea will recognise it." L.L. 94. The meaningless ' al ' for ' il' is probably due to the transcriber. 110 « Tell my Giova ja. See Piiixntorio, viii, 70-75. Cp. " One man says: 'Tell my (uovanna that I think her mother does not love me now,' — that she has laid aside her weeds I " /,.Z. 94. 110 n bent-down like corbels. CoHK' j)er sostentar solaio o tetto IVr nicnstila fcilvolt.i una tigura .•^i veder guingt-r le ginocchia al petto, La (jual fa del noii vurvera rancura Nascere a chi la vi'de ; cosi f;itti Vid' io color, quando posi ben cum. I'tirgatorio, x, 130-135. 110 16 Mountain shakes. The incident of the mountain shaking is given in J'lir^ntorio, xx, 121-151. Dante is very anxious to know the reason why, but does not dare to ask. The explanation is given, '6., xxi, 58-60. 111 26 as I urged. Cp. ««/,-, 7 .i-90. 112 17 ten silent centuries. Cp. ,;;//,•, 99 ». 113 14 yesterday, to-day. See Heb. xiii, 8. 113 19 Napoleon in St. Helena. " Ulliade est ainsi que la Gcm'sc et la Bible le signe et le gage du temps. Homere, dans sa production, est poete, orateur, historien, legislateur, geographe, tlieologien, c'est I'encyclopediste de son epoque: Homere est inimitable. ... Du restt-, jamais, je n'etais aussi frappe de ses beautes que maintenant : et ks sensations qu'il me fait epronver me confirment la justes.se de I'appro- bation universelle." Napoleon came back to the subject often : sc- Las Cases, Memoirs, II, .37 (May i, 1816), III, 289 (Sept. 13, 1816), Lecture III] THE HERO AS POET HI, 1816) 31 S (Sept. 22. 18.6), irr. i:,z (Sept. 25-27, iS.6), III, J27 11^ (Oct. 8. 113 ai oldest Hebrew Prophet. Cp. a„u, 56 1-9. 114 13 uses of this Dante. I hu fir.st chapter of Kmerson's Repre- sentattvf Ahn discu.s.ses '• Uses of (ireat Men." 114 a:i Arabians at Grenada, t]). „„/,•, 88 iii, 20. 115 1:1 fills all Morniug. Unidentified. 116*' Warwickshire Squire. < p. /;,/;,,, 1. 3, „. 116 -jrt Tree Igdrasil. C p. ,/«/,, 2.'J ai n. 116 yo Sir Thomas Lucy. .See Sidney I.ee, ./ L,/e of W,lUum Shiikesptwe, 27 f. Lond., iSyg. 117 I not a leaf rotting, (p. ,(///.•, 10 - n. 117 30 Freemason's Tavern. ( ariyle met with a number ..f dis- tinguished men, at this place, on J,u,e 24, ,.S,o, t., found the London I.ihr.Try. See ('./,./,. F, 200. 118 i(< It has been said. Cp. /-.o./i.r, liuriis, [, rS- 119 17 Fiat lux. Se.On. i, 3. • • - :>• 120 ■> convex-concave mirror. A kichtcrian idea ; see SU-!.,„ka^ cap, 1. translated l.y ( ariyle, Essays, Jean Paul J-rudnch Kuhtc, A -am 11.225. Cp. " Is this beside me yet a Man .^ Unhappy ..ne! V<,ur little life IS the .sigh of Nature, or only its echo ; . . ,,nve.x mirror throws its rays into that dust-cloud of dead men's a>hes, '^un on tlie llarth ; nd thus yon ch.ud-formed \va\eiiuj; pliantusnis arise." Cp. •• There' they are gathered together, blinking up to it w,ih :,uch vision as they have, scanning it from afar, hovering round it this wav and that, each cun- ningly endenvouring. by all arts, to catch some r. Hex of it in the little mirror of Himself; though many times thi> mirror is so twi.strd with convexities and concavities, and, indeed, so extremelv small in Mze, that to expect any true image whatever from it, is out' of the in on it as it was by nature, with a sort of noble instinct, and in no other way." L.L. 149. 12". ai Novalis beautifully remarks. •' When we speak of thf aim and .Art observable in Shakspeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; tliat it is, so to speak, self-vic'wing, self-imitat- ing, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. .Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker ; he was a niiglity many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of tiie same spirit; and in whiili the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies witli the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblem- atic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature ; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than LEtTURK III] THE HERO AS J'OET 329 that they are works of Art. in the narrow n.t-. hanical acceptation of the word." \..VAI.IS, lil„llu„st,u,h, ,|uotecl l.y Cariylo, Essays, H. mo. ''He- (Shakspere) "is strong .-.s \atua is strong, who lifts the land into mountain slopes without effort, and by the same ruK- as she floats a bubble in the air. and likes as well to do the one as the other " hMKRSON. N,-/^,eseutatr.c AA„, SAahs/.-.ite : or Ihf Poet. "O mi-hty poet ! Thy works are not as those of other men. simply and merely great works of art ; but are also like the phenomena of nature, hke the sun and the sea, the stars and the riowers; like frost and snow, rain and dew. hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the iH..rfect faith that in them there can be no too nm< h or too little, nothing useless or inert - but that, the fartiier we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of ilesiyn anil self-supi,ortinj,' arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident." De Qi inckv. 0» t/u Knockt,,^- at the U.i/c- III MaJ'tUi. '"' 123 L'a new harmonies. See 123 ai n. 124 :, as the oak-tree grows. < >. " And thus when we hear of so much said of the art of any .i;reat writer it is not a,t at all. it is properly natun: It is not known to the author himself, but is the instinctive behest of his mind. This all-producing earth knows not the symmetry of the oak which springs from it. It is all beautiful, not a branch is out of Its place, all is symmetry there ; but the earth has no conception of It, and produced it solely by the virtue that was in itself." L.L. 149 f 124 lu Speech is great. Cp. -Words are good, but theyare not the best." (;„KTI.K, WUhclm McisU;-s A/^r>:uluys/u/', bk. vii, cap. ix, tarlyle's Translation. II, 60. I.ond., i.SOS. 125 3 ' good hater.' •• I )ear liathurst was a man to my very heart's content: he hated a fool, and he hated a rogue, an.l he hated a Whig- he was a very good imter." I'io/.i's Aii^r.wUs, Sj ; ,|uoted, Hirbeck Mill's Bps-uv/1, T, 190, n. 2. 125 i;i crackling of thorns. .See Eccl. vii, G. 125 ai. Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister. See IHi/u'/m .Ueisfcr's Atprenticship, bk. iv, cap. iii to bk. v, cap. xii. Cp. -'One of the finest things of the kind ever produced is Coethe's criticism on Hamlet •n his ' Wilhelm Meister,' which many among you are aware of. I may call it the reproduction of Hamlet in a shape .uKlicssed to the intellect, as Mamlet is already addressed to the imagination." /../.. 1 ,7. " Let ns look into the scheme of his works, the play of Hamlet, for instance. Ooethe has found out and has really made plausible to his readers, all 330 NOTES [Lecture II «•':! sorts of harmonies in the structure of his plays with the nature o things, and we have realised in this way all that could be dumandec of him." lb., 149. 125 98 National Epic. " It is, as it were, an historical hero! poem in the dramatic form ... of which the separate plays cunstitu the rhapsodies." A. W. Schleoel, Lectures on Dramatic I.iteraturt 419. Lond., 1883. 125 98 Marlborough . . . aaid. " In a discussion with Hurnet upoi some historical point, he displayed so incorrect a conception of thi subject, that the BLshop asked him the source of his information. n( replied that it was from Shakspeare's plays that he learnt all he knev of English history." Woi.seley, Life of Marlhoroui^h, 1, H- Ixand. 1894. IvOrd Wolseley adds in a footnote : "This anecdote is told Ir Dr. Warner in his ' Remarks on the History of Fingal ' on Dr. Hurnet': authority." Cp. L.L. 149; Essays, On History, II, 230, where Carlyli refers to the same fact. 126 5 battle of Agincourt. A. W. Schlegel commends this par of Ihnry /'specially. Cp. 125 38 n. 126 9 ye good Yeomen. To be exact, " And you, good yeomen Whose limbs," etc. Henry V, III, 1, part of the king's speech a Harfleur, not at Agincourt. 127 3 Disjecta membra. Carlyle seems to have in mind " Inveniai etiamdisjecti membra poetje," HoR. Sat.,\, 4,62 ; but there is adifferen meaning in Horace. "The whole of it is rich in thought and imagery and happy expressions ; and of the disjecta membra, scattered about,' etr. Posweirs fohnson, sub ann., 1737, of Irene. 127 y We are such stuff. Reference to the statue by Kent ii Westminster Abbey. The " scroll " contains the famous lines fron The Tempest, IV, i, so often quoted by Carlyle. 127 38 little about his Patriotism. Carlyle must have forgotten for the time, John of Gaunt's dying speech in Richard II. 129 6 prolix absurdity. Cp. ante, 74 9-16. 129 13 Sir Thomas Lucy. See 116 ,19 n.," sending to the Treadmill." a humorous modernization of whatever was ihe Elizabethan punishmeiii for poaching. Lecti'hk IVJ THE HERO AS PRIEST 331 LECTURE IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST 132 8(1 open secret. See 91 ati n. 133 so live . . . fruit of hit leading. Mixed metaphor; cp. "un- ravel the kernol," ante, 26 St*. 134 15 wild Saint Dominies. An example of Carlyle's habit of making proper nouns plural, to give pitturusqueiiess to his style. The reference is to Domingo de (luzman, the founder of the famous order of preaching friars, • 1 )omini canes,' as they called themselves. Thebaid Eremites. Set Ki:igs: y, 'Jhc Hi-nnits. 135 16 Progress of the Species. '• What, for example, is all this that we hear, iox the last generation or two. about the Improvement of the Age. the Spirit of the Age. Destruction of Prejudice, Progress of the Species, and the March of Intellect, but an unhealthy state of self- sentience, self survey, the precursor and prognostic of still worse health." Essays, Cluintcti-ristusAW, 22 i. On June i, iSj;, Carlyle mentions in a letter to Emerson "a set of Essays on Progress of the Species and such like by a man whom I grieved to see confusing him- self with that. I'rogress of the species is a thing I can get no good of at all." I'.Corr. I, 125. 136 T in the ocean. Xo^ so much a quotation as Carlyle's conden- Nation of /n/,>ii,>, xxxiv, 106-1 j6. 137 U4 Schweidnitz Fort. Captured by General Loudon. Sept. 30. 17O1. "In another place, the Soo Russian Crenadiers came unexpectedly upon a chasm or jjridgele'^s interstice Ix-'tween two ramparts ; and had to'lialt suddenly, —till. (s:iys n.mour again, with still less certainty) their Ofiicers insisting with the rearward part, 'Forward, forward!' tiiouKh of men were timil.led in to make a roadway ! This was the story current; grea y exaj-gerated, I have no doulit." Carlyi.E, //is- tory of /yiedrich // of /'russia, VII, 394. N. V., 1898 (bk. xx, cap. vii). ( p. infra, 168 6. 138 13 Arab turban. A curious 'arm.' Could Carlyle have written ' tulwar' .' 138 26 cannot away with. " Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sab!)aths, the calling of assemblies 1 cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting." isa. i, 13. 138 38 done under the sun. " I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." tccl. i, 14. The phrase occurs five times in this same book. m 3)2 NOTES [I.K IIKK IV f| ?»1 ■f l; •'%■■ 139 a? Canopui. Caabah. Si c mil,; 1 1 n, and 60 -iw f. 140 14 dimly to doubt. •• Doubt " is laru a Sailtic ism, n|iiival> nt to "suspect." 140 at You do not believe. Iiannot find v^lic- DrtowhomColtridgi lays tliis. It occurs a^ain in liritf form in (Jarlylc's /.//;• c/.S/, 7 ////;,•, p, 47 (People's ed.). n. d., and may have l)een said of .Sterling; himself. 141 M timber and bees-wax. See ,/«/,. 72 i.i-i... 141 w TetzePs Pardons, .^ee /////-,/, 161 •,>« n. 143 7 Hogstraten. Jacobus lloogstraien.a Domiiiitan nmnk, whu wished to convince I.uther of his errors by tiie short argument of the stake; satirized in the EpistoliP Ohsiuroriim I'nonim. Mi,li,lit, 31 n. 143 s Eck. Johann I'ck (I4S()-| 543), I'rofessor of Theulojjy at Ingolstadt, Master of tiie Apostolical Chamber at Rome and licenser of books ; attacked I.uther on the subject of indulgences ; and went to Rome to procure his condemnation ; and was one of his opponents at the Diet of W Ornis. 143 1:1 Bellarmine. Robert I'.ellarmine (isij-ifiir) died Arch- bi.shop of Capua, a famous Catholic theologian and controversialist, noted for his learning, clear method, and moderation. 143 91 believe that. See 140 ai n. 14f ;. Serpent-queller. An allusion to the myth of Apollo as the slayer of the Python ; or possibly in view of the next line, to Spen ser's Red-cross Knight and his conquest of terror, h'aerie (hietiir, bk. i. cant. i. 146 21 Luther's birthplace. "In these circumstances Martin Luther was born. His parents were of the poorest people. Ills fath thrown to him, till at last the widow of a rich burgher, hearing of hi- aljility, .issisted him forward, and gut him placed at tlic University, where he soon distinguished himself." L.L. xzd. Lecturk IV] THE HKRC AS PKIhST 333 148 I thunder-hammer. Thor miaiis • thuiulcr.' fp. ,/«/,, 21 mi 148 I death of his friend. •• lli^ fathi r wislud him t,, |,e a lawy.i. and hi- was at lirM •.tudyinj. for ihat, Imi affc rwards. iipun .s.-einj,' a companion struck Midtltidy dead l.y lu> tatln rV :>idr. I.utlur. naturally a .serious, mtlantliolyniind.d man, \va> s.. slunk to ih.' heart at sutini,' Ixfore his eyes a duar friiiid ut omu hurrinl away into l-.tcriiity and inliniludc, that tiic l.iw and thcj |.ioinoti,,n> it ..||, red lilin sank into a poor, miserahlf dream in comparison to th. un.it irdiiyl..! liim, and hel)ecame a numk tliat lie niijdit occupy him-. It uh..)ly with piaver and rehnion." /../.. \n\. 148 rJT a pioua monk. •■ !(.• iMcamr. .,, h. t.lU u-, -a strict ami painful monk,' and this lifu cciainiiol many yeai-, n..i.iytcn years." /,./.. i.'fi. " l).i/u mus/ er die wmt hsi,, ; <„, alle fremlxle M^-dancken I vnd da.sz eis allcin horete ; viid dn- vmlih^r w.ir.n ^ nicht icli l»in auch fin sokher frommer Munch jjt-wesen in die tin Iti/fheii J.iie ] (lott vert;el) niirs." Citiiij; perchli..n. and hi couhl not see how prayer, saying of masses, coidd save iiini or ^ct him to Ikavtn" /../.. ij6. 149 17 an old Latin Bible. •• At last one of his !ii..ther monks, a pious, good man, told him, what was ipiile mw to hnn at tile lini", tiiat the real secret of the thiiii; lay in n pi ntaiue ami faith in lesiis ( lirist. This was the first insight he ever got iiuo it, thai it was not pray« r nor masses at all that couhl savi him, Imt failini; (h>wn in -pirii as Siriptnre says at the foot of the ('ro-.>! At llii^ tun. , too, h, f,,un,l ;i |;il,le, an old Vulgate Dihle, in the (onvent lil.rary, whi. h he uail. .md in this way he got peace of mind at last, hiit he s' iiiis to h.ive iiiirodn, nl no project of reform at the time." /../.. ij(,f. •• Mml, astonishment has sometimes heen expressed at l.ntlur's -disi o\cry ' of the I'.iMu at tiio C."onvcnt Library of Krfurt. 'Hie real e.vplanatioii of his previous igno- rance of its contents is that l.ulher entered the ( )r(Ur a Masitr of Alts who had nt^ver studied in a theological K.u iilty."' \< XsiihM i , Cnnvru- tii-s of /un-o/'c in the Mi,/,//,- ,-/;■,•?, 1 1, pi. ii. -o\. ( ixford. i,So5. On the other hand, Luther himself said that th. I'.ihlc was ,i hook laiely found in the hands of the monks, who kiiuw .St. 'liicinas 1.. ttei than St. I'aul. A/i,helft, i8, n., and i/>.. d, n. i. See D'Auliigne, //is/,i)v of tin- h'cfornui- tton, l)k. ii, caps, v, vi. 160 4 Priedrich, the Wise. There is a portrait of Frederick in the cheap English translation of Luther's Lift' by Kustlin. % I ■ i •I' 3i4 XOTES [Lkctiirk IV 160 n Profeaior In . . . Wittenberg. • He continued to grow in eittecm with tveryl.o.lj. rhe IKnor of Saxony, hearing of hi« gnat talents and harmony, lirought him to the lniverj.ity h.- hail ju.it founded, and made him one of the professors tlxie." /../.. 1.7. 160 II he first aaw Rome. •• His convent afterwards sent him to Rome, for he remained an Augustinian monk, to manage some affairs of the convent : tliis was in the time of I'opc Julius II. lie was deeply sho< ked at all he saw there, liut was not in the least aware then of the work he was in a few years to do." /./,. 127. 160 Hi what we know. Carlyle's moderation is non worthy. What l.uther found was the Italy of the Horgias. .See D'AuliiKue. Ilistnty of tin- A'lj.iHhitii'ii, l)k. ii, tap. vi. 161 l!» sorrowfulest of theories. f'ompareCatlyle's generous indig- nation at a similar interpnt.itiim of Xante's conduct, (p. ,////,, 108 u "Again, turning in the ..th.r direction, he criticises Luther's Reforma- tion, and repeats that old and inileed cpiite fooli>h story of the .\ugus tine monks li.iving a merely lommercial grudge against the Dominican." /•.■>.>, MM, 7'/l7iV V Sut~, ,y 01 (Urmiiu /.i ft ratine; II, .((I. ir.l •,>« The Monk Tetzel. "Hut at last Tet/el, the (elel.rated Dominican, i ,im«' int.. Sa.\..ny to sell indulgences, lie wis sent by I'ope l,e<> X, who wanted money for some purpose, .some say to l.uy jewels for a niece, and he sold them there he.side l.uther. I.uthei soon found it out in the confessional, as he heard fri ijuently from tho.se who came to confess, that they had no need of repentance for this or that .sin, since they h.id bought indulgences for them ! This set Luther to preach a sermon .igainst the sale of indulgtii. .s at all, in which he asserted that the Church ha.s only ])<>wer to remit the penalties itself imposes on sin, hut not to pardon sin, and that no man has any author ity to do th.-it. let/el responded to this, .uid at last l.uther saw him .self obliged to look deeper into the matter, and to publish Ids ninety-five propositions as to indulgemes, denying the foundation of the whole matter altogether, and challen^inj; Tet/el to prove it to him either in reason or Scri])ture. This occc-ioned a great ferment in (ier many, already in an unsettled state of opinion, and produced several missions from the I'ope." /../.. ij; f. l.uther is himself the authority for this statement ; see MuheU-t, So, 182. 152 24 Huss. The Hohenuan reformer and martyr; born about 1369, burnt at the stake. July (>, 1,(15. ^^^^ also 154 !:> n. Jerome. The martyr of Prague, convert of Wyrliife and friend of IIuss, hrrn between 1360- 1 370, burnt at the stake, May 30, 1416. I.rrriTM IV] yy/A //AA'o ,ts rNJi ST .VJS 162 '£< CoBsUnce Council. This hdLiM.- mfeting (i4i4-i4i.S( wax f.ir Ihc purpo-f of pnltiny .111 end to tin.- iirenul.ililicx in the t-ltUitui of ilu' rii|H', and til pri'M'iit liif <\{ l|ii>'. Imm ..preatlJn^, 163 « words of truth. Sic Art> xwi, .'5 153 \* at the Elater-Gate. In II '. ( ail}l. w.i<. rmt a>Ltirdt( as to tilt! placf. "Finally, lainn ixi i>niniiiiiii .itiil l>) tlif l'<)|>c, he pul)li> ly buriieil the extoniiminiiation in ilu prtMnn; of Iih frionlHil cxpittanty aiming tlif l>t;li.pliU r>, l)iit n>>iliinj» moie then, thougli tlnyiiudd nni jj, |p fi-i jinj; that tlit; ttiitli must lie with him." I. I i.».S. 153 :ii Mahomet said. Sll' 72 1 1 n. 154 I.'. Diet of Worms. -In tiif uar \\:\ . . he surnndirtd himNttf to the Dit't of Wdini*. whun- the l.in|Hri'i li.id rtsnh.d to havu hitn tried, although he rtnuniliert il liuw Ilu-.^ h:i s uf .ill ,1 d.iim;^, j;rf.il, ti.irfid I iitfrpri>e, hut not fe.irfiil Im l.uilui, wIxim' lite was n.it t" sink into a downy sleep, while he heard llw .u'rt.it i.ill u\ .1 f.n otl„ r lif'- upon iiini, so he determined to go. 'riii., w,i» on tin i;th of .\piii. i;.m. ( h.irli-s V, the l.niperoi. and th. -i\ l.ieiiors were >ittiii« there, and there was he, a poor man, son of .1 p.oi niiiier, with noihinii Imt (Jod's iriith for hi.s support." /. /.. ij.S f. 154 y.i as many Devils. " lli> frieiuU nu 1 him at t!ie gate and t.ld him not to enter the 1 ity. as tlic ihin^ei was .;iiat; hut he told thmi (lelil)erately 'that, upon the whole, he wonlil uo in, though there Wite as many devils in \\orms as hoii-etiles." " /,./.. i;^. (^(uotcd alsfi, A... ,;)■,, /.i.t'i.r's /'v./Zw, II 2.\2. 155 1 Whosoever denieth. See Matt. \, ^3. "Hi; aeeordingly appeared, and went thiougli an exaniinati^p on matters of religion, Willi h was wound up iiy the (piestion, • \\ oidd lie rr( .mt iii> opinions.-' " The answer was to he given on the morrow ; he nie, ., n. 157 14 No Popery. When Carlyle was giving these lectures, the Anglo-Catholic Revival, or O.xford Movement, was almost at its height. The next year (the year the lectures were published), Ntvvman issued his famous Tnjct XC. In 1S42, he left the Anglican communion. While Herccs remained in manuscript. Carlyle wrote to Kmerson (Dec. 9, 1840) : " To fly in the teeth of Knglish I'useyism, and risk such shrill welcome as I am pretty sure of, is questionable; yet at bottom why not.'" E.-Corr. I, 338. 158 2fi man that has stirred-up. For example, the men that made the French Revolution. Carlyle notes also how Knox dominates the Puritan movement in Scotland ; see infra, 173 !i. 159 I a preach without a cassock. " l.uthur thus writes to George Duchholzer, an ecclesiastic of Uerlin, who had asked his opinion respecting the changes recently introduced into ISrandenburg. 'Ast<. the chasul)lf, the processions, and other external matters that your prin< t will not abolish, my opinion is this: If he allows you to preach the go.-, pel of Jesus CJirist in its purity, without any human additions, . . . then I say, (;o through whatever cerenionies he recpiires, whether they relate to carrying a gold or .silver cro.ss, to chasuble of velvet, of silk, or linen, to cope, or what not. If he is not satisfied with one cope or chasu!)k, put on three, after the fashion of the iiigh priest Aaron, who wore thi. e robe.s, one upon the other, all beautiful and gorgeous garments.'" Mkhclet, 456. To Carlyle, the born Presbyterian, the difference be tween a chasuble and a cassock was trifling; both were articles of ecclesiastical man-miilinerv. LECTiJRK TV] THE IfEA'O AS PK/EST 337 li>n 10 Karlstadt's wild image-breaking. Tw., of the Koformers, Storch and M.inzei, went l,ey,.ncl l.utl.er's teaching; aii.l a^- rtace. Essay 2. for a long discussion of this ini id, nt. " Lis. nach, with its Wartburg, where Luther lay conre.ile.i transl.iting the i'ible : there I spent one of the most interesting forenoons I ever got by trav- elling They open a door, yr,u entr, a little apartment, a v.ry poor, low room with an old le.ul. n lattire wi,„!ow, to nu. the ,no,t venerable of all rooms I ev. r entered. ... I kj.s, cl his old oak tabh,., looked out of his window -making tlum open it f,., me -and thought to myself. 'Here once live.l one of ,;o,r, soldiers, be h<.„„u, .yiven him.'" Carlvlk. to his luotlur, (pioted by llhint, T/ir C\uiv/,s' Clulsfa Home, p. 46. I.r.nd , 1.S95. See C.I..I.. II, 1 17. 161 ;i The Devil is aware. In a letter to the i:iector. daicd Ash Wednesday, 1522. •• The devil well knows it was not bar made me do this: he saw my heart when I entered Worms, and knows perfectly well, that, had the city been as full of devils as there are tiles on the i fi ii 4^^^^ 338 NOTES [Lecture IV house-tops, I would joyfully throw myself among them. Now Duke George is even less in my eye than a devil. ... If God called me to J^eipzig, as he does to Wittenberg, I would go there, though for nine whole days together it were to rain Duke Georges, and every one of them were nine times more furious than this devil of a duke is." MicheUt, ii8 f. 162 6 Luther's Table-Talk. Michelet's Life of Luther, translated by Hazlitt (Bogue's European Library, Lond., 1846), furnishes the English reader with the readiest means of understanding the Table-Talk, as it is almost wholly constructed out of it. The references are given, and there is a copious Appendix. " Luther's Table-Talk is still a vener- able classic in our language." Essays, State of German Literature, 1.35- 162 13 He is resigned. Chapter i, book v, of Michelet's Life is devoted almost entirely to this incident. The child died in 1 542 at the age of fourteen ; her name was Magdalene, not Margaret, as Carlyle put it both here and in 1. 18 of the first edition, H '. "When his daughter was very ill, he said : ' I love her well ; yet, O my God ! if it be thy will to take her hence, I will resign her without regret, into thy hands.' As she lay in bed, he said to her : ' My dear little daughter, my darling Magdalen, thou wouldst, doubtless, willingly remain here with thy poor father, but thou wouldst also go hence willingly to thy other Father, if he call thee to him .' ' " Michelct, 298. 162 20 his solitary Patmos. Luther dated his letters from the Wartburg, "from the Isle of Patmos"; it is Carlyle's name for Craigen- puttoch. 162 23 flights of clouds. " I have lately seen two signs in the heavens: I was looking out of my window in tlie middle of the night. and I saw the stars, the whole majestic vault of God, supporting itself, without my being able to perceive the columns upon which the Master rested it ; yet it fell not. ... In the morning I saw huge, heavily-ladin clouds floating over my head, like an ocean. I saw no pillars support- ing the enormous masses ; yet they fell not, hut, saluting me gloomily, passed on ; and, as they passed on, I perceived, beneath the curve whicli had sustained them, a delicious rainbow." Michelet, 307 f. 162 27 bMuty of the harvest-fields. "Another day, on his way tn Leipzig, seeing the surrounding plains covered with the most lu.xuriant crops of wheat, he fell to praying with the utmost fervour, exclaim ing: 'O God of all goodness, thou hast bestowed upon us u vear of plenty. . . . Thy voice causes to spring out of the earth, and out of thi Leciure IV] THE HERO AS PRIEST 339 sand of the desert, these beautiful plants, these green blades, which so rejoice the eye. (i Father, give unto all thy children their daily bread.' " MichiUt, 266. cited from Lutlu-rs lUUfe, v, not the Tisch- redcn. The passage also refers to spring, not harvest, and to Luther's going to, not/rom, I.tipzig. 163 a That little bird. " f)ne evening, doctor Luther, seeing a little bird perching on a tree, and taking up its rest for the night, observed : ' That little bird has chosen its shelter and is about to go to sleep in tranquillity: it has no disquietude, neither does it consider where it shall rest to-morrow night, but it .sits in pea. e on that .slender branch, leaving it to (lod to provide for it.' " Mic/ni.t, 266, cited from Tischreden, ^T,. Frankfort. 1568. 163 13 The Devils fled. " .Music, too. is very good ; for the devil IS a saturnine spirit, and music is hateful to him. and drives him far away from it." Mic/ula, :iy., cited from risc/nrdn, 238. Cp " .Sathan fleuhet die Musica." ColloquU, Mcnsalia, fol. 217. Frankfort 1571. 163 17 Luther's face. "The wild kind of fo , that was in him appears in the physiognomy of the portrait by Luke Chranak. his Iiainter and frien.l. the rough ])lel.eian countenance, with all sorts of noble thoughts shining out through it. Ihat was precisely Luther as he appears through his whole history." /../,. i y. 165 1 1 the Mayflower. The Mayjlo-.vcr .sailed from Southampton • the ship that brought the Pilgrim Fathers from Delftshaven was the Speedwell. 165 30 Neal's History of the Puritans. The account in Neal does not correspond e.xactly to what farlyle gives here. The words of the Rev. Mr. Robin.son. as quoted in the edition of 1754 („ot 1755). are chiefly warnings against the Lutherans and falvinisi.s. and advice to his flock to "shake off the name of Hrownists." 166 15 History of Scotland, fp, 88 u n. 166 17 Knox. In his tenth lecture of the course in 1838. Carlyle notices incidentally the most common view of Knox: "A poor notion of moral motives, he (Robertson) must have had; in his description of Knox, for instance, he can divine no better motive for him than a mis- erable hunger, love of plunder, and the influence of money; and such was Hume's view also! The same is remarkable of Clibbon in a still more contemptible way." /../. 176. Mrs, Carlyle was a descendant of Knox, and Carlyle shows his admiration for him as a great Scots- man, in his private letters and elsewhere. -1 340 NOTES [Lkcturf. IV Of the Lady's song, Thyrsis •' r m 'if'' i 1-^ 166 3,1 under the ribs of . . . death, says: I was all cnr And took ii\ -trains that might create a soul Undtr the ribs of death. Comus, 560-562. 167 33 tumult in the High Church. .Arising from Jenny Geddes flinging lier stool at the r.i.sh<.p'.s head, as a protest against the " Mass." See Carlyle, llistoiical Skcttlus, 307-310 (l.ond., 1S98), for a lively account of it. 168 i glorious Revolution, of 16SS. It was so styled officially. See Carlyle's CiomuhU's Li-tlas an,! Sf^.-.ihi-s, end. 168 Ditch of Schweidnitz. Cp. aiit.\ 1S7 'J4 n. 168 i:( official pumps. Il.vplained in another edition of Heroes as, " Reference to extravagant and alfecled dress of the age." Purnps and silk stockings (with knee-tirecL-hes) are still part of " utticial" dress of various kinds in Knghuul, a>, fur example, the "Windsor uniform." 168 i:t Universal three-times-three. As thi.s phrase has been explained as '• Reference to the battle-cry, 'A Free Parlianient and the Protestant religion,'" it may he wrll to mention that it denotes simply the tripling of the usual tiin-' thecis, • hip hip-hurrah.' For an em- barrassing multiplication of cheir.s, to express still greater enthu.siasni. See T/iroN.;/! the Lookini^-Cliiss, end. 168 lit Half-and-half. In the political language of the day, the middle term between Radic;cl and I'ltr.i ; lailii', mugwump. 168 JO in French galleys. See 170 11; n. 168 -js shot at. I cannot lind that Knox was .shot at through his windows. 169 do St. Andrew's Castle. " Ti-ough a monk, he determined now to have nothing to do witii Calliolicism, and lie withdrew from all prominence in the world until he had reached the age of forty-three, an age of quietude and composure. When he was besieged in the Castle of St. Andrew's along witii his master, whose children he had educated, he had many t onfrrences with his mastt r's oiiajjlain. The latter having first consulted witli the people, who were an.xious to hear Knox preacii too, suddenly addressed him from the pulpit, .saying that it was not right for him to sit still when great things were being spoken ; that tlu' harvest was great, but tiie laiiourers were few ; that he (the chaplaini was not so great a man as Knox, and that all were doirous to hear the latter; ' i.s it nut so, btelhrcn.^' i-,e a~kcd, to which lliey assented. Lecture IV] Tt/E 1/ERO AS PRIEST 341 Knox then had to got into the pulpit, treinl)ling. with a pale face, and hnally burst into tears, and camu down, not having lieen able to sav a word." L.L. 1 53 f . ' 170 .-, baptism he was called. Adaptation of Luke xii. :o. See also 170 ifi n. 170 6 « burst into tears.' Knox is the authority for this incident • see his collected Works (td. I.aing,, 1. ,S6-i8,S. After stating kough'J charge, Knox continues: "And in the end, he said to those that war present. ' Was not this your charge to n.e ? And do ye not approve this vocatioun.'' They answered, -It was and we approve it ' W hairat the said Johnne abashed, byrst forth in n.aist abundand tearis, and withdrew him self to his chalmer." Works, I. iSS. Edin.. 1S46. I'arlyle makes the scene a trifle nmre dramatic. 170 Hi Galley-slaves. •• It was a tiery kind <,f baptism that ini- tiated him. He had becme a preaciier not three months, when the ras.i. surrendered, and they were all taken prisoners and worked as galley slaves on the river Loire, contined fur life there Seven years after we find him escaping from the hrench galleys, when he came to Kngland." /../.. ,54. .• lie never gave up, even in the water of the ix^ire. . . . Their Virgin Mary was once brought fur some kind of reverence to the people of the galley, and it was handed to Knox first- but he saw nothing there but a painted piece of wood _a 'pented bredd,' as he called it in his Scotch dialect; and on their pressing him, lie threw it into the water, saying that ' the Virgin, being wooden, would swim.'" //.., 155. See McCric, Uf, 0/ John Knox, I, 6S, Kdin.. 1814,- and Hume lirown, /.//;/ K,wx, A Hu^f^'ni/^hv, \. 84. Original authority. Knox's A',/orm„/ioii ni Scotlan,/, bk. i. See Works (ed. I.aing), I. 227. Kdin.. 1S46. 170 L>8 told his fellow-prisoners. "The said Maister fames a.ui lohne Knox being intill one galay, and being woun.lerous familiare with him, would often tymes ask his judgement. - \{ he thought that ever thei should be deliveied ?" Whose answer w,.s ever, fra'the day that thei entered in thegalayl., -That Cod wold delive, thame from that l!ondage, to his glorie, evin in this lyef." " K.vox, Reformation in Siotlnnd. bk. i. Works, I. 22S. 171 !. He lies there. '• It was truly said of him on his deatii-bed by tlie ^;arl of Morton, 'There he lies that never feared the face of man!'" L.L. 156. Not cpiite accurate in form. -As he stood by the grave, the Regent Murray, with that sentenli.)usness of speech for which he was noted, pronounced the memorable eulogy on the dead — ft? •If ii h '" m I M 'I 342 NOTES [Lecturk I 'Here lies one who neither flattered nor feared any flesh.'" IIim Brown, y. sible for any man to do Kno.x's functions ami be civil too; he ha either to be uncivil, or to give up f-coiland and Protestantism alt' gether ! Mary wanted to make of Scotland a mere sliooting-groun for her uncles, the Cluises." /,./,. 1 56. V^l a Better that women weep. Original source not found. 172 H Mary herself, "((insidering the actual relations of the tw parties, it is absurd to spi'ak of Knox as a coarse man of the peopli bullying a defenceless (pieen. Tiie truth is, that if there was .mi attempt at browl)eating, it was on Mary's part and not ;.n that >'■ Kno.x." Ifi:MK Hkiiwn./i";;/ A'//.'.r, ,/ Hioi^iaplty, 1, 196. I.ond., i8y; Who are you? " What have ye to do," said sche, "with my marria,L,'c Or wliat ar ye witiiin this Commoini wealth ? " " .\ subject born within the same," said he, " Madam." Kni >\, KcjWntittion in Scotlau,, bk. iv. Works (ed. Laing), H, 3SS. 172 is Tolerance has to tolerate. Here ("arlyle joins hands witi Newman, who, he said, had not the brains of a ralil)it. t'p. •' We ar none of us tolerant in wliat concerns us (l<-eply anil entirely." Cm ^ RincK, 'l\illf-7\ilk, izc). I.ond., i8S.(. 173 !i virtual Presidency. Cailyle notes tlie same thing o Luther. Cp. aiiti-, 158 -Ji;. 173 10 subject born. Cp. suj^ra, 172 s n. 173 :in His History. Thr History <_/" th,- Ktformation in SiOtland it occupies the first two volumes of the collected works, ed. Laini: 1S46. For a most interesting estimate of the work, see Hume Brown John Knox, A /uo^ia/''iy, bk. v, crp. ii. 173 :ii two Prelaies. "Above all, there is in him a genuim natural rusticity, a tiecided earnestness of purpose; the good naiiii! and humour appear in a very striking way, not as a sneer altogetlu r but as a real delight at seeing ludicrous objects. Thus wlien lu describes two archbislio])s quarrelling, no doubt he was delighted to -u the disgrace it brought on their church : but he was cliielly excitctl \i] Lecture V] THE IIENO AS MAX OJ- LETTEKS 343 the really ludicrous spectacle of rochets flying alnrnt and vestments torn, and the struggle each made to overturn the other." /,./,. 155. •• Cuming furth, (or going in, all is one,) at the qweir doore of (Jlasgow Kirk, begynnes stryving for state betuix the two croee heraris, so that from glowmyng thei come to schouldering; frome schouldering. thei go to huffettis, and from dry blawes, by neffis and nulfelling j and then for cheriieis saik, thei crye, Disfcrsif, ,i,;lit /'ait/^.rihis, and assayis quhilk of the croces war fynast mettall, which staf was strongast, and which berar could best defend his maisteris pre-eminence; and that there should lie no superioritie in that behalf, to ground gois boyth the croces. And then begane no litill fray, but yitt a nieary game ; for rockettis war rent, typpetis war tome, crounis war knapped." K.nox, H'orks, I, 146 f. 174 10 faces that loved him. Cp. R. I.. Stevenson, Familiar StuJies 0/ Men and Hooks, John Knox and his Relations to Women. 174 19 " They ? what are they ? " Not identified. 174 a- Have you hope ? " Asked to give a parting sign that he was at peace, he lifted his hand, and apparently witliout pain passed quietly away." Hume Hrown, /<;//// Knox, A Juox'ra/^/iy, 1 1, 288. 175 ao a devout imagination. Original source not found. n LECTURE V THE HERO A.S MAN OF LETTERS This and the final lecture were written down by Caroline Fox in her diary, immediately after hearing them ; see Journals and Letters, I, 181-195. Lond., 18S2. They show interesting differences. 179 l« Fichte. Johann Gottliel) (1762-1814), follower of Kant. His influence is to be see'' in Characteristics and Sartor Kesartus as well as here. See also Essays, State of German Literature, \, 62-66, where the passages briefly referreii to below are quoted fully. 179 20 Wesen des Gelehrten. Delivered at Krlangen in 1805; translated by William Smith, The Pof'itlar Works of Johann Gottlieb i'iehte. The A'ature of the Scholar, pp. 239-363. Lond., Chapman and Hall. 1848. 179 a? Divine Idea. " The whole material world, with all its adaptations and ends, and in particular the life of man in this world, are by no means, in themselve.s and in died and truth that which they seem to be to the uncultivated and natural sense of man ; but there is !•« :!■! 344 NOTES [Lecture something higher, which lies concealed liehind all natural appeurano This conceal.-(l foundation of all appearance may. in its greate^ universality, he aptly named the Divint JJai." The Popular Wo> i ofjohann Gottlitb Fuhu, Tht Nature of the Scholar, I, 247. Lond 1848. "The Idea— the Divine Idea — that which lies at the bottor of all appearance, — what may this mean ? " Ih., p. 256. Co Essav Diderot, Uhz^l- 180 93 light Of the world. See Matt. v. 14 ; and John viii. 12. 180 94 Pillar of Fire. See Exod. xiv, 19, 20, 24. 180 39 Bungler. " If the striving lie only after the outward forn — the mere letter of Learned Culture, th^n we have, if the rouiu be finished — the complete -if it l>e unfinished - the progressiva bungler." Hodman. " With labourers and hodmen it is otherwise : - their virtue consists in punctual obedience, in the careful avoidance o all independent thought, and in confiding the direction of their occu pations to other men." The Popular Works ofjohann Gottlieb Fichtc I, 250 f. 181 1 Nonentity. " He who has received this culture withoui thereby attaining to the Idea, is in truth (as we are n..w to look upon the matter) nothing." The Popular Works ofjohann Gottlieb Fieht, L 249- 181 7 Goethe. No one was better fitted to bring Goethe before an English audience, body and soul, than Carlyle. His reasons for n..t doing so are disappointing. What did the British public know of Odin or Mahomet? In 1832 Carlyle wrote: " Among ourselves especially, Goethe had little recognition ; indeed, it was only of late that his exist ence, as a man and not as a mere sound, became authentically known to us ; and some shadow of his high endowments and endeavours, and of the high meaning that might lie therein, arose in the general mind of England, even of intelligent England. Five years ago. to rank hi.n with Napoleon, like him. as rising unattainable beyond his class. lik< him and more than he of quite peculiar moment to all Europe, would have seemed a wonderful procedure." Essays, Goethe's Works III 170 f. ' 181 22 heroic ancient uan. "Goethe's language, even to a for eigner. is full of character and secondary meanings; polished, yet vernacular and cordial, it sounds like the dialect of wise, ancient, and true-hearted men." Essays, Goethe, Appendix, I, 463. 183 31 Art of Writing . . . miraculous. Cp. ant.-, 31 ir,-o5. 184 90 CelU. Can Carlyle mean Cecilia, Miss Burney's novel ? LECT.TRE V] TlfE IIF.KO AS MAN OF LETTERS 345 Clilford i;o.Hil,Iynn allusion to I.yt.on'. novel r,ul r/j/?;w (,,S,o) whKh Klealue, a highway rol.ber. Carlyle had alrea.ly jeered a Pe ! ham and h« au.hor in Sartor K^^sartus. Sir Kger.on ll>^ge« .'o.e 1 novel l/..,.,/,.cv.>./,i„ .800; and Sir Frederick l-oMock refer i." 184 .... What built. A variation of what larlyle said to Kmerson on .s V.SU to Craigenputtoch. » Did not you tell „.e. Mr. ThoL' aye. s..t.ng upon one of your broad hills, that it was Jesus ChX Innlt Dunscore Kirk yonder?" E.Corr. \ 14 '•"'• v-nrist 185 6 Teaching. Caroline Fox summari^■cs this part of the lec- t re as follows = " He spoke of education, and resolved it into the s n . pie elen,en,s of teaching to read and write ; in its highest or univer i y sense .t .s but the teaching to read and write on all subjects and in many languages. Of all teaching the sublime.s, is to teach a tnan th " he has a soul; the absolute appropriation of this fact gives Life an, l.ght .0 what was before a Primate of England. The 'styles' of tlic Archbishop o York and of tlie Archbishop of Canterbury respectively. 187 'U live coal. .See Isa. vi, 6, 7. 187 'M apocalypse of Nature. See 179 •.>? n. open secret. Sei 91 !«! n. continuous revelation. See 17U t, w. 188 'X\ Church Liturgy. See Sartor, jjo ; and Essays, Signs of th Tinii's, II, 156, for the same idea. 188 'Jl Burke said. Kliezer Edwards in his Words, Facts an, l^krasis attributes this phrase to Carlyle himself, and cites this passag( as his authority; but the discussions in Xotcs and Qut^rirs sei-m to shnv that Itrougham originated the phrase, and used it in the House of Com mons, as early a;: iS23 or 1824. I'arlyle employs the phrase in Essays h'oxwi-t/'s l.ije of Jx'hnson, III, 121 (1832). 191 :i Chaos . . . umpire. Cp. . . . Chaos umpire sits, And by decisUm more enibruils the fray, ISy which he reigns. I'lirndiic Lest, li, ((07-9119, 191 10 omnipotence of money. Carlyle also discusses literary pov erty in his Essays, Slate of German Literature, I, 47-49; and ib.,Jeai I'ttil Eriedriih Kit /iter, II, 196-199. 192 5 best possible organisation. (,)uoted from himself. Cp ante, 190 •.>.>. 192 H involuntary monastic order. Cp. " Tl rst Writers, bein; Monks, were sworn to a vt)w of Poverty; the t. .on authors had w need to swear it." Essays, Jioswel/'s Life of j Anson, III, 106; aiu Qttiiitiis Eixlein, II, 156. 193 17 Literature will take care of itself. Source not found. 194 :» the Chinese. Carlyle shows Scotch caution in approachiiu Mandarindom ; his praise is not lavisli. We have seen the results o literati rule in China in the war with Japan. 194 w-i it is a hand. Quotation from Carlyle himself. "More over (under another figure), intellect is not a tool, but a hand that c.u hand! ny tool." Essays, Diderot, \\\, ^''i^. 195 •X\ the third man. " There is one fact which Statistic Scientt lia.-, Loniniunicated, anil a most astonishing one ; the inference fiuii which is pregnant to this matter. Ireland has near seven millions u Lkcturk V, 77//; UEKO AS MAN OF LETTllKS 347 working pc-ople. ,h... thir.l uni. of whom. i. appear* I.y S.a.U.ic Sclcnco. ha« not for thirty weelc. each year, as many thir.iraL p.„a,.„.H „ wil .«t c. him." CV...>. ,v. Cp. ..We L Two Mi.L,,.. .h.; ,:'! drecl thousanci m Ireland that have not potatoes enough." E.-Co,,. 196 ., Sceptical Century. So Carlyle clas.si.ieH the KiKhtcn.h < entury; xee „,;/., 51 , n. ; a.ul his l.,,tu,.. „„ tlw /fni.ry .^ /,,,,,.. fur,. Lorn!.. iSo.r For what .an lie said .„, the ...hcr si.l. , ^.e I rederi. larn.son^ ^ Fnu nW./s .,/..,„, ,/,, ,-„h,.,„t,, Century , /», x,„eu,„th UHtury, March, iSSj), reprinted in T/u ,;„ ; ,p. „„/;, oi M n. ' 199 6 Of Bentham. fp. anu, 87 :i -xi 199 3. Doctrine of Motives. Cp. Carlylo-s .„„,..„.p, f..^ the U d.tanan eth.cs n, the •• Motive-Millwright •' p.ssa.e in .S,,,... .s,.«. Ms, 200-201. • 200 , PhaUris'-Bull. Carlyle has confused I Vrillus. , he inventor <.f the bra^en bull, with l-halarLs, the tyrant who rouMe.l hin. in I. A common error. 201 .7 Cagliostro. See /,V.,,,,r. fount ,./.„/,„. ,1, 202 .-.Chartisms, chartism was a mnvenunt really n.o.lerate in .ts aims for popular rishts. It came to a hea.l in ,,S,,S. the ye ir of revolutions. Carlyle saw the fiasco. •• April , o (immort.d day alr'eady generalization 1 I. ^ e not |}«en a!>lu to find in Hoswtll. Johnson tell> how he UM;d lu li.ie for Ligiitpence at tlic Pine Apple, New Strret. and his Of. ' ca .lins how to live in London on £,\o u year, liui the sum of I nu'i. -half-penny as johnsonV daily expenses do«» n<>t appear. , /, f, 'icswtU's Johnson, III, i2j. 204 9 'j.'t ! ( V; tory. Mr. Hirrell contra.sts Carlyle's Johnson's li is r ^\ "ct, and shows Johnson's superii -'ty. jyuta, Stcc ' '!■'!■ , Pr.Johf ton, 109-116. lA>nd., ISS;. • lf»'»- . y ''p. ante, 204 a n. Aieer wuli Sc-o Obit ft fO 1. P'.- 206 4 206 6 ! .K a' O't that John .. .1 till hift povei y belt., feet appearcc thiou) '1 ' was perceivi.a l>y liic v ri ','.. Itateman's lectures were so excelleni. ' iiul get tiicm at second-hand from Taylor, :treine, that his .Hhoes were worn out, and hi> 1, he saw thut thiM humiliating circumstance iiri t Church men. and he came no more. Hf was, too proud to accept ' f money, and somebody having set a paii of new shoes at hi.t door, hi- threw them away with indignation.' fiosweWi /o/iMsoii, sub ann., 1729. For Hawkins's version, sue Kssays. PosuH-ir s Life iffohnsoti. III, 102. 207 14 to be looked at. A (|uotation from Carlyle himself. Set 207 i.'> n. 207 \:> St. Clement Danes. "How a true man, in the midst ol errors and uncertainties, shall work out for himself a sure Life-trutli . . . how Samuel Johnson, in the era of Voltaire, i an purify and fortifj his soul, and hold real coniniunion with the Highest, 'in the Church ol St. Clement Danes'; this too stands all unfolded in his Biography, ami is among the most touching and memoralih- tilings there; a thing to In looked at with pity, uilniiration, awe." /.'j.i.;i'v, liosuu-Ws Life if John so, III, 119 f. 208 :hi engrave Truth. "Sotinian i'reachers proclaim • Henev lence' to all the four winds, and have Tki ill engraved on their wati li seals: unhappily with little or no effect." Kssays, ChuracUristiis, III, r; 209 9 Mirabeau. See /■:ssiiys, IV, 85-162. 209 Jfi Moral Prudence. " Prudence is the highest virtue he ' (Johnson) "can inculcate; and for that finer portion of our natun-. that portion of it which lielongs essentially to Literature strictly - called, where our highest feelings, our Ijest joys and keenes! sorrows, our Doubt, our iicligion reside, hu h.is no word to utter ; no rcmctiy. no counsel to give us in our straits; ur at most, if, like poor lioswtll, Lr.tiiiBK.VJ r//h //E/CO AS AfAX Of- LErrKKS 149 Ihc patient 1» importunate, will answer : • My dear Sir. endeavour to ckar your mind of Cant.' " hst„ys, i.ofi/u, I. jji. " Higher liKht than that immediately/ni«-/iV,//onej hiKher virtue than an hont-M rRii)K.Nilemu vain .Scruple*, hold firm to the last fraxments of old Iklitf. and with earnest ey.- still discern some glimpses of a true path, and ro forward thereon. •,« a world where there is much to Iw done, and htilf |.. Ihj known': this is what Samuel Joht.son, hy act and word, tuugbt his Nation." fCssavs, KosweU's I.ifi! of Jihnson, III. 1^9. 209 J!. A world where much. S»e 20» •» n. Irom a prayer of Johnson^ : " And wl.ilc it shall pl, ase thee to continue mv in this world, where much is to be done and littlt- to In known, teach me by thy Holy Spirit." liosweirs Johnson (( .lol)e ^1 ). 1 1. 210 :i Clear your mind of cant. »>iins<.n, • ny dear friend, clear your miml uf cant." l^oswdl ',> Johns.' M.iy 1 5, , 7S j. .And see 209 ,0 n. 210 , That Will be better. Unid. itified. 21 1 poor Bowy. For fuller defence of Ho-.wvll and counterblast V-. Macaulas see Essoy^. Hoswetl's Life 0/ /o/:nu ,1, MI, 76-85. Cp. "There is .s, mething fine and touching too, if we will consider it. in fhat little, flini.y, flippant. %ain fellow, Hoswell. attaching himself as he (lid to Johnson : before others had discovered anything >ublime. Hos- well had donr it. and embraced his knees when the Inisoni was denied him Hoswell was a true hero-worshipper, and does not deserve the •mpt we are all so ready to east at him." Cirolni,- Fox, Her Journals ami l.(ttt>s, I. 1S5 f. 211 \i Hero to his valet-de-chambre. In .somewi it its present form, the saving is attril.utcd to ili<- Marshal ile Catin;. anc' Mdf - . < 'ornuel, one of the famous Prkintsei. Huchmann tracts it ti. M ntaif Essays, bk. iii. cap. 1. ( 'p. " Milton was still a li-ro to the p".d Llwooa." Essort himv.lf. on his (^.'n leys, without any crutches, purcha.sed or stoki re, gh old .Samuel, the last of all the Romans ! " Essays, Jean Paul /-, ej, Eu/iter, U, 196 f. iff 350 NOTES [Lecture V ultimus Romanonim. According to Plutarch (Life of Krutus), the say- ing of Brutus over the dead body of Cassius. " There he lamented over his body, and called him the last of the Romans : intimating that Rome would never produce another man of equal spirit." Lauglwrne, VI, 23C. Lond., 1823. (1^. Julius Casar, v, 3, 99. 212 ja talent of silence. Attributed to Napoleon in the form : "C'es Anglais ont un grand talent pour le silence." Cp. 258 a. 212 17 Rousseau, t'arlyle read Rou.sseau in 1S19. See K.Lett. 112. Cp. "Carlyle did not much sympathise with his works; indeed he said, ' The Confessions are the only writmgs of his which I have read with any interest ; there you see the man such as he really was, though I can't say that it is a duty to lay open the «lue-l)eard chamliers of the heart. . . . Rousseau was a thorough Frenchman, not a great man ; he knew nothing of that silence that precedes words, and is so much grander than the grandest words, because in it those thoughts are created of which words are the p»or clothing. I say Rousseau knew nothing of this, but Johnson knew much ; verily, he said but little, only just enough to show that a giant slept in that rugged bosom.' " Caroline- /-ox, Ilcr Journals atid Letters, I, 1S6 f. 213 18 Genlis's experience. "Two months after M. de Sauvigny had a play to be performed at the Theatre Fran^ais, entitled the JWsi- Jleur. Rousseau h.-id told us that he did not frequent the theatre, and that he carefully avoided showing himself in public ; but as he seemed very fond of M. de Sauvigny, I urged him to go along with us the first night of the play, and he consented, as I had obtained the loan of a grated bo.K with a private staircase and entrance. It was agreed that I was to take him to the theatre, and that if the play succeeded, we should leave the house before the after piece, and return to our house for supper. The plan rather deranged the usual habits of Rousseau, hut he yielded to the arrangement with all the ease in the world. Tiie night of the play, Rousseau came to me a little before five o'clock, and we set out. When we were in the carriage, Rousseau told me, with a smile, that I was very richly dressed to remain in a grated box. I answered, with the same good humour, that 1 had dre.ssed myself for him We reached the theatre more than half an hour Iwfore the play began. On entering the box I l)egan to put down the grate, but Rou.sseau was strongly opposed to it, .saying that he was sure I should not like it. I told him that the contrary was the fact, and that we had agreed upon it besides. FI.- answered that he would place himself behind me, that I should conceal him altogether, which was all he wished \ \ % % LECTt/RE V] THE HERO AS .J/.I.V ()/■ LETTERS 351 for. I still insisted, but Rousseau li..l(l tlio .urate stronj^Iy, anil jirevented mc putting it down. During tliis little discussion we were standing; and the box was a front one nr.ir the ..uliustia and adjdiiiing the pit! I was afraid of drawing the attention of the audience towards us; to put an end to the dispute, I yielded and sat down. KMusseau placed himself ])ehind nie, Imt a niomeiil afterwards put forward his head l)etwixt M. de C.enlis and nie, so as to l)e .seen. I told him of it. He twice made the same movement again, and was pii. eiveil and known. I heard several persons, looking towards our bo.x and calling out, ' TJure is A\uimy,iu !' . . . all eyes were fixed on our I)ox, but nothing further was done. The noise di.sappeared, 'vithout producing any applause. The orchestra began, nothing w.is thought of but the play, and kous.seau was forgotten. . . . The curtain rose, and the play began. 1 thought of nothing but the new pl.iy, whi. Ii succeeded. The' author was several times called for, and his sun ess was complete. " We left the box. Kou.sseau gave me his hand; but liis face was fright- fully sombre. I told him the author mu>t be well pleased, and that we should have a delightful evening. N(,t a word in uply. ( )n p aching my carriage I mounted; M. de (lenlis came ,ift( r Kous-e.iu to let him pass first, but the latter, turning round, told bin) that In should not return with us. M. de (;enlis and 1 jnol ud against this ; but Kousseau, without replying a word, made his bow, turned his back .iiul disapjv m-d. "I knew that there was no sincerity in his « mplaint.- ; the fact is, that with the hope of producing a lively .sensation, he desired to show him.self, and his ill humour was excited by not finding his |)resence l)roduce more effect. I never saw him afterwards." Mnnons ij the Countess iic Cii/is, II, ii-i.). I.ond., i.Sj^. 213 ^><» man of some rank. Inidrntified, 214 11 appeals to mothers. See /.w//,-, bk. i, /■,/.>.!////. 214 !>!» stealings of ribbons. Tiie story of the stohn ribbon is told in the Coii/i-ssu'iis, pt. i, bk. ii. 215 It Literatureof Desperation. ( arlyle refers to Miss Jewsbury as "a notable young woman, . . . seeking passion.iti ly for some Paradise to be gained by battle; fancying ( ieorge Sand and the 'literature of desperation' can help her tlutherwaid." CI. I.. I. ii\. 215 17 even at a Walter Scott. < arlyle was never .piite just to Scott. This dis|>ar.iging "even" is in harmony with his disparaging review of I.ockhart's ///;•. Ilis verdict would no doubt have been "lore lenient h.id W waitid to r.id !!•,.■ -cvi ntli volume. Me was reading Dante at the same tinif. rl 352 NOTES [Lecture V 216 99 world was not hU friend. See Rcmeo andJulUt, v, i. ^^ 216 ai false reception. Cp. ante, 49 as. 217 6 which threw us. " My indignation yet boils at the recollec tion of the scoundrel factor's insolent threatening letters, which used to set us all m tears." Burns to Dr. Moore, August, 1787. 217 13 Burns's Schoolmaster. Mr. John Murdoch. This is rather an unwarranted generalization from Murdoch's letter to Currie of Feb. 22, 1799. ' 217 16 seven acres of nursery ground. See 217 30 n. 217 30 Had he written. " Had this William Burns's small seven acres of nursery-ground anywise prospered, the boy Robert had been sent to school; had struggled forward, as so many weaker men do, to some university; come forth not as a rustic wonder, but as a regular well-tramed intellectual workman, and changed the whole course of British Literature, — for it lay in him to have done this!" Essavs Burns, I, 301. S.18 36 fond gaillard. See Essays, Mirabeau, IV, 129, 136. 218 33 dew-drops from his mane. Adapted from Troilus and Cressida, 3, 225 f. And, like a dewdrop from a lion's mane, Be shook to air. 219 1 shaking of the spear. A misquotation ; see ante, 56 13 n 219 9 Professor Stewart. "Among the poets whom I have hap- pened to know, I have been struck in more than one instance, with the unaccountable disparity between their general talents, and the occa- sional inspirations of their more favourable moments. But all the faculties of Burns's mind were, as far as I could judge, equally vigor- ous ; and his predilection for poetry was rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned temper tnan a genius exclusively adapted to that species of composition. From his conversation I should have pronounced him to be fitted to excel in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to exert his abilities." Dugald Stewart. Sketch of Burns contributed to Currie's edition of the poet's works; also quoted in part by Carlyle, Essays, Burns, I, 284 f. 219 19 witty duchesses. See ante, 97 2 n. 219 23 ostlers at inns. See 219 19 n. 220 26 Ushers de Br&«. The incident is told in Essavs, Mirabeau, IV, 159, and Erenck Eevolntion, the BastUle, bk. v, cap. ii. ' Mera,ri„s de Brhi, A Lecture V] THE HEKO AS MAN OF LE TTERS 353 72- 220 30 work, not think. In 1792 Burns was in danger of dismissal from the Excise (see his letter to R. Graham of Fintray, December, 1792). He gives a full account of his trouble in another letter to Mr. J. F. Erskine of -Mar (.\pril 13, 1793) ; Carlyle's phrase seems based on the following passage in it: ".Some such sentiments as these, I stated in a letter to my generous patron, Mr. Graham, which he laid before the Hoard at large ; where, it seems, my last remark gave great offence; and one of our supervisors-general, a Mr. C^orbet, was instructed to inquire on the spot, and to document me — "that my business was to act, not to think ; and that whatever might be m a or measures, it was for me to be silent and obedient." " 221 10 Strength is mournfully denied. See Quintus Eix/ein, Pre/- aee. " Johnson came a little nearer the mark than Hums : but with him, too, ' Strength was mournfully denied its arena'; he too had to fight fortune at strange odds, all his life long." Ess,ns, Bos-we/i's Life of Johnson, III, loi. 222 6 By dint of dining. Unidentified. 223 9 This month. The same contrast is drawn. Essays, Burns, I, 304. seven pounds. See ib., 310. 223 12 cynosure of all eyes. Adaptation of rAi/egro, 80. 223 20 rank is but the guinea-stamp. From the first stanza of Hurns's Marseillaise of Democracy, " Is there for honest poverty," etc. 223 28 observed elsewhere. See Essays, Bums, I, 311. 224 9 light-chafers. In Eraser's A/te (Xos. 1, 4; 1830) appeared Carlyle's translation of Kichter's ruvitw of .Mde. de Stael's VAllemagne. In it occurs the phrase, which ( 'arlyle quotes inaccurately : " From old our learned lights have been by the French, not adored like light-stars, but stuck into like lijiht-chafers, as ])eoi)lt.' carry those of Surinam, spitted through, for lighting of roads." E\savs, Appendix, II, 460. Caroline Fox's version is: •• Wh.it a tragedy is this of Robert Hums ! his father dying of a broken heart from dread of over-great poverty; the son from cont.ict w-lh the great, who W(juld flatter him for a night or two and then leave him unfriended. Amusement they must have, it seems, at any expense, thougii one would have thought they were sufficiently amused in the common way; hut no, they were like the Indians we read of whose grandees ride in their palanquins at night, and are not content with torches carried before tliem. but must have instead fireflies stuck at the end of spears. ... lie then joW us he had more than occupied utir tinn and rii^:hid down stairs." C.iro'im Eox, //er Journals and Letters, I, 1S8. i I 5 i'i- ^ I 'i r I ■ i i « 354 NOTES [Lecture VI LECTURK VI. THE HERO AS KING 226 12 Konniag. See ante, 14 a n. 225 17 as Burke said. Unidentitieil. 226 9r, measure by a scale. I- rom a famous passage in Schiller's A,sil„l,schc Krzuk.n,.,' dcs Ahns,Iuu, translated by (arlyle, /;..„„■., St^tc of German I.,t.,.,tnre, I, To. Of the artist, Schiller says: " Free alike from the vain activity that longs to impress its traces on the fleet- ing instant, and from the querulous spirit of enthusiasm that measures by the scale of perfection the meagre product <.f reality, let him leave to mere understanding, which is here at home, the province of the actual " Evidently the first inverted comma in the text should come hefore ' too ' • the querulousness is not Schiller';; in quotation, the sense has been completely changed. 226 31 no bricklayer. Carlyle uses this figure in picturing the Knghsh Tempi, of Fame (see Essay., Taylors S.n-.ev of German Literature, 11,451); the endings are similar: "Such is the Temple of fame . . . which nothing but a continued suspension of the laws of gravity can keep from rushing erelong into a chaos of stone and dust " Cf. in/ra, 229, 14-2S. 228 32 Kdnning. See ante, 225 13 n. 229 20 Christian Church, t'p. ante, 151 2k ff. 230 4 CamiUe Desmoulins. See /-rene/i Kevoh.tion, the Bastille bk. v, cap. iv. 231 3 poor Niebuhr. "The last political occurrence in which Nie- buhr was strongly interested was the trial of the ministers of Charles the 1 enth ; it was indirectly the cause of his de.nth." ISinsin /.// and Letters of liartkold Geony A.el.uAr, p. 4S7. N. N'., ,852.' ( )„ Christmas day, .S30, he spent several hours reading the papers i„ , close news-room, became overheated, caught a chill, and died a week later, of inflammation of the lungs. 231 7 Racine's, dying. "The melodious, too soft-strung Racine when his King turned his back on him. emitted one meek wail, ind submissively - died." Essays, The Jhamond Xeeklaee, I V, 27. ( loethe mentions the anecdote in IVilhelm Menters Lehr/ahre, bk. iii, cap. viii L.-Jrans. I, 147. 233 3 plated coins. Cp. ante, 14 7 n. 233 13 Bending befoie men. Co. ante, 12 la n. 233 \^ revelation in the Flesh. Cp. „«/~\C)C)2\ for life see Diif. A'nt. A/V;^. 239 :)i Monarchies of Man. See Sir John Kliot, A /U(\t^'>;t/>hv. Lend., 1.S64. The Appendix to vol. I contains a very full analysis of this work. 240 i;t Baresark. l!y this spelling, as well as by the opening of the next sentence, Carlyle countenances this old etymology, and the mis- take is often repeated. Kluge derives the woril from O.X. bcr- and s,:rkr., i.e., bear-shirt, or clad in bear-skin. 241 3 Liberty to tax. Unidentified. 243 12 Pococke asking Grotius. See 50 i.-> n. 244 10 had fancies. The tendency of modern biographers is to discredit these tales of (ronnveH's youth. Mr. Frederic Harrison, in his short study {Tuhlvc Eiif^lis/i Stuhsmen), balances friendly memoirs against hostile; and .Mr. C. M. Frith says {/)i,l. X,it. A'/oi,'-)'- "The graver charges of early debauchery which they bring against him may safely be dismissed." 245 14 Ever in . . .eye. See Milton, .Voww/ <'«//// /W«^'-(;;-/-mr/ /<( Ml.' (/j,r o/.sj. 246 5 crowning mercy. " The dimensions of this mercy are above my thoughts. It is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy" Cromwell, to Lenthall, of the battle of Worcester, Ldtas and Sf^cahcs (pop. ed.), Ill, 158. 246 10 without God. See Kph. ii, 12. 246 24 Hampton-Court negotiations. •• In 1647, before the escape of the king to the Isle of Wight, 'The iiimeasurable Negotiations with the King,' ' Proposals of the Army,' ' Proposals of the .\djutators of the Army,' still occupying tons of printed pajjir, the subject of intense debatings and considerations in Westminster, in Putney Church, -nd in every house and hut of Kngland, for many months past, — suddenly contract themselves for us, like a universe of gaseous vapour, into one small point : the issue of them all is failure. The Army Council, the Army Adjutators, and serious Fngland at large, were in earnest about one thing: the king was not in earnest, except about another thing: there could be no bargain with the king." Cari.vle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (pop. ed.), I, 263. ^1 llfff n I ii ' ) 356 NOTES [Lecture V 247 8 For all our fighting. "The treaty that was endeavourec with the king, whereby they would have put into his hands all that wt had engaged for, and all our security should have been a little bit ol paper. • Cari.vi.e, Cromweirs L.tUrs ami Sfccches, sfcr/. L 247 23 genuine set of fighters. The present commanderin-chief of the Hntish army has expressed the same opinion, and his views are shared by other writers on military history. See Lord Wolseley on the Hntish army in Harper's Monlhly Magazine. JAl 96 If the King, fireen quotes this saying as genuine (Short History of the linglish People, cap. vii, Sect, vii, p. 539. N V 1870) • but Cardiner. Great Civil War, III. ,96, asserts that there is no reason for ascribing it to Cromwell. 248 ae small debt pie-powder court. "The Piepowder Courts the lowest but most expeditious courts of Justice in the kingdom, as Chitty calls them, were very ancient. The Conqueror's law De Fmho- rns shows their pre-existence in Normandy. Their name was derived from puJ fnUreux, Norman for pedlar. The lord of the fair or his representative was the presiding Judge, and usually he was assisted by 'jury of traders chosen on the spot. Their jurisdiction was limited bv the legal time and precincts of the fair, and to disputes about contracts' ' slander of wares,' attestations, the preservation of order," etc. Eueye Brit., s.v. Fair. 249 14 Know the men. " The curtain dashed asunder faster than before; an officer advanced and said in passing: 'Learn to know tlie men who may be trusted.' The curtain closed." Carlvi.k. Meister's Apprenticeship, bk. vii, cap. ix. 250 29 internal meaning. This is Carlyle's general form of justi- fication in the Letters and Speeches. 251 9 Tugend. This etymology is generally accepted. 252 .is ever-calculating hypocrite. Victor Hugo's Cromwell is an elaboration of this idea. 254 11 I might have. Cp. " There is, doubtless, a time to .speak, and a time to keep silence; yet Fontenelle's celebrated aphorism / might have my hand f nil of truth, and would open only mv little finger may be practised to excess, and the little finger itself 'kept closed '• hssays, Taylor's Sun'ey of German Poetry, \{, 450. 257 21 Corsica Boswell. What poor Hoswell really did, was to go to a masquerade as a Corsican chief with the words " Viva La Libe'-a ' " on his hat. Carlyle's version is, "He appeared at the Shakspear- Jubilee with a riband, imprinted ' Corsica Boswell,' round his hat.' Lecturr VI] Essays, THE IIEKO AS KING 357 h s Account of Corsica, w.th the Journal of a Tour to that Island " Krerh\rd\'" "' I'"" '«"' '"' ''^ independence again te French, and hero-worshipping Hoswell had "tied himself to the tail " o General Pao h. " the land-louping scoundrel of a ( orsican." the leader o the .nsurrecfon. before he " took up wi> " Johnson. Johnson advise" h.m once, by letter, to empty his mind of Corsica (March .3. ,768). an hu. reply explains why he was known as. Corsica Boswell.' 258 9 grand talent. See 212 is n. 258 13 Solomon says. See Krcl. vii. 258 16 want of money. - He uniformly adhered to that strange opinion which his indolent disposition made him utter. " Xo ma^b! b ock ead ever wrote except for money." " /,ww/ V p>..,son (ed lull). Ill, 19 (a.i). 1776). ^ the'^ffmnl. ^; M**1\ '■*'° "^ ''''"^°' '"' ^ -^'^'"^ -'^^'^^ "> him. in ond o7f h K "'^'"'"'^ •'"• ""' '^"«'^'^'' »' 'hose who were Lt whi e 1 "• • • ; ./'"' '"^ ^''°^'-' "'^' -P--«' 'hei. wonder, he said /A haJmuch rather it should 6.- ask.J, -.chy he h,ui not ., statue than^v>hy he had one." L..c„ok.vk. /V„ W. V Les, 1 1 1, .5. I^nd.. 258 .T9 Seekest thou great things. See Jar. xlv, y ^9.0 Coleridge remarks. Not found in 77.. /WW, ^/.,,.«. phta Literaria, nx The Table-Talk. in fl 'V,?f """ "°T- ,'''''^'^^''' '"' ''^•"•■^^^' ^-•" "^'^^ came n 178.. Gibbon wrote his Memoirs towards the end of his life, about .90. and refers to Necker in closing the account of his love aff a r S Mde. Necker. when she was Mile. Curchod. .- The genius of h" hi band as exalted him to a most conspicuous statio'n in Kurope I„ o afa hTff P-'-P-ity and disgrace he has reclined on the bo.som Necke th m- :"' f '^^'"--"^ ^"-^od is now the wife of M. 0^489 A 7s,::: '^t ""'' "'" '""■'"' -f^'-^ wriM ; ■ *■'' "^''''y **^"'y ^^^'^ l^efore, Carlvle had ^^T ''" ""^^^'^ '°^ "^^^""'^ ^''""^""^^"^' ^>^a'< / Jl i' a vUit '•'" P-^^^'^S^"""- •• " I could have wished." says Gibbon, after exh r^ I t"^^ ""' ''"'•' •''^""'^ f°^ '^'-^ fi"^' ''-g^-ce], ..to have demon f a"", ^' ^ ""^"'"^ '° ""^ ^^P'""^ >°"'h possessed with the i.e IS the most miserable of human beings; the past, the present, and M 3S8 NOTES [Lkcture V I V '= I! the future aru tf|ually odious to him. When I siiKj^ested some domesti amusements, he answered with a diip tone of despair, ' In the state ii which I am, I can feel nothinj; Imt the I>last that has overthrown me.' ' Cari.YI.K, Mimtaii(tu\ atiJ Otlur Esuiys Chiijly J{ioi;^ru/>hiial, Gz i Lond., iS(j7. 260 l-,> ears cropt-off. See Carlyle, llistoricat Sketches, 271, f.. a most graphic account of this punishment executed upon liastwick Iturton, and I'rynnc. 261 4 devout imagination. See .;«/■•, 175 90. 262 a Hume. In lus //ist,»y <l.'iy those vulgar and ridiculous hahit which he had early accjuired, and on which he set so high a value." 263 -i Cromwell's last words. " Truly Cod is good ; indeed Ih is; He will not " — Then his speech failed him, but as 1 apprehendeci it was, " He will not leave nie." This saying, "Cod is good" he fn cjuently used all along; and would speak it with much cheerfulne» and fervour of spirit, in the mi/,tio»»ii/r, Universel des Arts et Sciences, begun by John .Mills in 1743 as a tran^l.i tion of Chambers's Cyclofudia, and taken up by Diderot and I)' Altni bert. The first volume under the new conditions was published in 1751, and the second in 1752. They were suppressed as injurious t' the king's authority and to religion, fp. " They taught many truths, his torical, political, physiological, and ecclesiastical, and diffused theii notions so widely, that the very ladies and hairdressers of Paris became fluent Encyclopxdists ; and the sole price which their scholars paid for these treasures of new information, was to believe Christianity an im posture, the .Scriptures a forgery, the worship (if not the belief) of C.o.l superstition, hell a fable, heaven a dream, our life without PiuvidciiLt, and our death without hope." Coleridge, T/ie Friend, 6. r'l Lectube VI] THE IfERO AS A'WG 361 274 16 dumb Prophet. The reference seen., to J« ,„ Cromwell', "repu.fd confuHion of H,H,ech " (250 ■>) an.l thf " vthemc-nt. enthusi- Mtic, extempore preaching" of the Aonin, 11 \\. 274 W5 F*Ue «• « bulletin. ( uriyle is l.a.l enough, but Kmerson u very bold. ( p. - I le is a boun.lle.. liar. The official paper. hLs • .Monl- tears, an.l all his bulletin., are proverb.s for saying what he wished to l)e beheved; and worse -he sat in his premature old age, u. hi. lonely island, coldly falsifying facts, and dates an.l characters and givinu t.. history a theatrical eclat." h\fnsv„t.,tir, .)/,«. //, Xa/>oh„,. '.The historian of these times ought to put no faith in the I-ulletins. despatches notes, proclamations, which have emanate.l from Honaparte, or passeil through his hanils. For my part. I believe that the proverb • \s great a liar as a bulletin,' has as much truth in it as the axiom. 'two and two make four.' " H.,: uu.k.n.vk. A/,mo„s, M. j,^. i.ond.. i8jo One good example of such falsification is th.. bulletin from Acre, giving the French loss as five hundred kille.l and one tlw.u.sand wounded when the loss was really three thousand; and the Knglish los.ses arc- put at fifteen thousand. See Hourrienn.'. //-., I, cap. x.x. p. jjj. 275 17 MTans, Bourrienne tells. I have found this .story Teferre.1 to Hazlitt. I.i/t of NapoUoH, H. 97-1,4, J.ond.. 1S5;. „hich I have not been able to verify; but see. however, the one volume liourrumu; cap. X. 275 37 steward . . . TuUeries. Unidentified. 276 i In Saint Helena. The memoirs of Las Cases show the very opposite temper : " We were all assembled round the Kmperor, an.l he was recapitulating these facts with warmth : ' For what infamous treat- ment are we re.served ! ' he exclaime.l. ' This is the anguish of death ' To mjustice and violence, they now add insult an.l protra, te.l tor- ment At all events, make y.ur cmplaint.s. gentlemen ; kt indig- nant Kurope hear them ! Complaints from me would be beneath my dignity and character. I must command or be silent.'" I.\sC\sks M.moin, I, 162. N. v., ,855. This was on his first arrival at St! Helena, when his accommodations were at their worst. 276 18 La carriire ouverte. Cp. •' ISuonaparte himself was a reality at first, though afterwards he turned out all wrong and fals*;. But hU appreciation of the French Revolution was a good one, that it was 'the career open to talents," not simply as Sieves supposed, a thing con.sisting of two Chambers, or of one Ch^.mhcr" Z./. 195. See Montholon. Mhnoircs, ii. 145. It was a favorite saying of Napoleon's, and is referred to his speech at the institution of the Ugion of Honor. •tfl 361 NOTES [I.rcruKK VI IJ 276 9fl Twentieth of Jum. " While we were ipending our time in a Romewliat vagal><>nd way, the 20th of June arrived. We met by appointment at a restaurateur's in the Kue St. Ifonorc, near the I'alais Koyal, to taltc one of our daily ramble*. On going out we saw approaching, in the direction of the market, a mob, which Konapartc calculated at live or six thousand men. They were all in rags, armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hasttily towartls the Tuilvries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collt.ction of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of I'aris. ' Let us follow the mob,' said Honaparti-. We got the start of them an(! took up i>ur station on the terrace of the banks of the river. It was there that he witnessed the scandalous scenes which took place ; and it would l)e dilticult to descrilw the surpriHe and indignation which they excited in him. When the King showed himself at the windows over looking the garden, with the red cap, which one of the mob had put on his head, he could no longer repress his indignation ; ' Che logliom: I ' he loudly exclaimed ; Why have they let in all that rabble? Why don'l they sweep off four or five hundred of them with the cannon; the rest would then setoff fust enough." Hoiikkienni,, Memoirs, I, iS, Lond., iSjo. 276 'J9 Tenth of August. " Heboid the fire slackens not : nor does the Swiss rolling-fire slacken from within. Nay, they clutched cannon as we saw ; and now from the other side, they clutch three more ; alas, cannon without linstock ; nor will the flint-and-steel answer though they try it. Had it chanced to answer! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings ; one strangest patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name of him Napoleon Honapartc." L'ari.vle, /K«,// KiTolntioii, The Constitution, bk. vi, cap. vii. 277 J Peace of Leoben. Itetween Napoleon and the Austrians, April 18, 1797. See .Montiiolon, Memoirs of the History of Frame, IV, cap. xviii. Ix)nd., 1824. 277 17 these babbling Avocats. I.as Cases attributes a similar remark to Napoleon himself. " That ... he should have exclaimeil : ' France will be lost through these fine talkers, these babblers : now i- the time to save her.'" I, as Casks, Memoirs, 1, 144. N. V., 1S55. 277 93 Lieutenant of La Pfere. "Who does not pity the nol.l.' chamlK-rlain that confesses his blood to have run cohl when he heani Napoleon — seated at dinner at Dresden among a circle of crowned heads — begin a story with when I tvas a Lieutenant in the regiment of Lkciukk VIJ /•//A IIEKO AH A/.\U M^ I.II F^rf." f-.imi/y /.linirv, /.//,■ of X„f'ol,on, II, 37 |,.i yin- \s a ' territoriiil • name for a rtijiinuni l,.iv.rs of SUviiiv,ii will ri-call the town aa it o< cur* in Ah liilnid I ov./vc. 277 ya glyen up to a atrong delusion. Ste a Tu. »,. ii, 1 1 . 278 » Pope's-Concordat. riic a«r»Lirnni Utwicu N4|)olcon and l'i>pe I'ius VII in 1S09, for the oltitial rciognition of the Irtncii kcpiil)- lic by the Curia, and the Church of Rome by the K-public. The full text ix given in Munthojon. M,nions ,^/ Ih, llntoiy ,fh,.nu.\ I. Affem/ij. 307-J25. " The foncordat w.ns n. .fs^ary to reliRion. to (he Kepulilic, to government : the temples w.ii' >liut up. the phesti* perse- oued. The Concord.it rLJmilt the altars put an tnd to disorders. i om- mandetl the faithful to pray foi the repul.l: . and dissipatid tlu- m ruple* of the purchaseisof national doma'iKs." M >miiimiin. .1/ moin, I, rjo. 278 II vaccine de la religion, -one day he assured the prelates that, in his opinion, th^ c \va.s no rtliL;! .11 but the C.nth« lie. nhiih wa.<» truly founded on ancicu: tradition; dul -r. this n'.u" i he MMially dis- played to them some erudition: tlien, vvh. 1. hi \.,s wiih the philoso- phers, he said to Cabanis, " Ih, you Im ,w w Mii- ( n urdat is which I have just sij^ned ? It is the vaccination 1 t 1, li^i. ,,. ai.ii m fifty years, there will be none in France!"" Dk Siai i. loin II, p. 275. C.irlyle was reading her IkioIc. i'.'u^uhr.itious sur /, r I'rnuif^mx J-.Viiumens ,h I.a KaolHtion Fran^ohi . in 1S19. See /:'./.erg. court-martialed and shot by Napoleon's orders, at Hr.iun.tu, Aug. 26, 1806, for selling a pamphlet called Jhutschland in seiner li,j. sten Eruiedri^^iing, which was directed against the French. He refused to name the author of it. The assassination roused the Germans and had its influence in bringing about the war of liljeration ; and Palm's house, like Diirer's. is one of the sights of his city. 279 29 notions of the world. For example, " I should have wound up the war with a battle of Actium, and afterwards what did I want of England .> Her destruction .> Certainly not. I merely wanted tiie end of an intolerable usurpation, the enjoyment of imprescriptiblt-. and sacred rights, the deliverance, the liberty of the seas, the inde- pendence, the honour, of flags I had on my side power, ", ^disput- able right, the wishes of nations." Las Casks, Memoirs, July 15, iSiO. 280 ;t another Isle of Oleron. A remark made to las Cases, on May 24, 1S16. " England . . . would in course of time become a mere % \ Lecture VI] THE HERO AS KING 365 appendage to France, had the latter continued under my dominion. Kngland was by nature intended to be one of our Islands as well as Oleron or Corsica." Las Casks, /^«r«rt/, vol. II, pt. ii, p. 330. Lond., 1823. Cp. " Napoleon must have been merely jesting, at .St. Helena, when he said, that four days would have enal)led him to reach London! and that nature had made Kngland one of our islaiuls. like Oleron or Corsica. I find these words in my notes : ' Remained with the First Consul from half-past eleven to one o'clock.' During this hour and a half he said not a word bearing any resemblance to his assertions at .St. Helena." Bourriennk. Memoirs, II, 474 n. Ixind., 1830. 281 a The accomplished and distinguished. This compliment has the rare merit of being both courtly and true. ( )ne of the ' beautiful ' in the audience, thus records the close of this lecture: " He then told us that the subject which he had endeavoured to unfold in three weeks was more calculated for a six months' story; he had, however, been much interested in going through it with us, even in the naked way he had done, thanked us for our attenti.in :ind synii)athy, wished us a cordial farewell, and vanished." Cmoline Fox, IL, Journals and Letters, I, 193. Carlyle closed his lectures of i8j8 also, with gracious words. " Nothing now remains for me but to take my leave of you — a sad thing at all times that word, but doubly so in this case. When I think of what you are and what I am, I cannot help feeling that you have been very kind to me. I won't trust myself to say how kind ! Hut you have been as kind to me as ever audiente was to man, and the gratitude which I owe you comes from the bottom of my heart. May 11 God be with you all LL. l]\ i\' i % I CARLYLE'S INDEX Agincourt, Shakspeare's battle of, 126. Ali, young, Mahomet's kinsman and convert, 66. Allegory, the sportful shadow of ear- nest Faith, 6, 35. Ambition, foolish charge of, 256 ; laud- able ambition, 259. Arabia and the Arabs, 54. Balder, the white Sungod, 21, 40. Belief, the true god-announcing mira- cle, 66, 87, 167, 200; war of, 235. See Religion, Scepticism. Benthamism, 87, 198. Books, miraculous influence of, 183, 189; our modem University, Church, and Parliament, 186. Boswell, 211. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 7. Bums, 216; his birth, and humble heroic parents, 217; rustic dialect, 3i8; the most gifted Britisli soul of his century, 2iij; resemblance to Mirabeau, 220; his sincerity, 221; his visit to Edinburgh, Lion-hunted to death, 222. Caabah, the, with its Black Stone and Sacred Well, 56. Canopus, worship of, 11. Charles I fatally incapable of being dealt with, 246. China, literary governors of, i<>j. Church. See Books. Cromwell, 238 : his hypochondria, 243, 250 ; early marriage and conversion, a quiet farmer, 244: his Ironshfes, 247; his Speedies, 252, 270; his 'ambition,' and the like, 254; dis- misses the Kunip I'arliament, 264 ; Protectorship a.id Parliamentary Futilities, 2r,,S : his last days and closing sorrows. 272. Dante, 9S; bingraphy in his IJook and Portrait, <>S : his birth, education, and early career, i/j; love for IJea- trice. unhappy marriage, banish- ment, t/)-. uncourtier-like ways, loi ; death, his Dhina Commeilia 367 genuinely a song. 104; the Unseen World as figurefl in the Christianity of the Mi.ldle .\ges. iii ; -uses' of Dante. 114. D.ivifl, the Hebrew King. 53. Divine Right of Kings, 227. "u'y. M, 7,1; infinite n.iture of, 86; sceptical spiritual paralysis, k/j, F.ihla, the .'s<.indinavian, 19. Kighteentli Century, the sceptical, ii/)-J04. zy). Elizabethan Km. 115. Faults, his, not the criterion of any man. 5^. I'ichti's thedry of literary men, 179. Fire, miraculous nature of, 20. I I 368 LECTURES ON IfEROES Forms, necessity for, 236. Frost. See Pire. Goethe's 'characters,' 120; notablest of literary men, 181. Graphic, secret of t>eing, 105. Gray's misconception of Norse lore, 39. Hampden, 238, 230. Heroes, Universal History the united biographies of, 1, 33; how 'little critics' account for great men, 14; all Heroes fundamentally of the same stuff, 32, 4:,, cp, 132, 177, 219; Heroism possible to all, 146, 167 : Intellect the primary outfit, 121 ; no man a hero to a 7'(;A-/-soul, 211, 239. *49. Hero-worship the tap-ioot of all Re- ligion, 12, iS, ; perennial in man, 16, 96, 145, 233. Hutchinson and Cromwell, 238, 272. Iceland, the home of Norse poets, 18. Idolatry, 138 : criminal only when insincero, 140. Igdrasil, the I.ife-tree, 23, 116. Intcllftt, the sumiiury of niun's gifts, 121, 195. Islam, 64. Job, the Book of, 56. Johnson's difficulties, poverty, hypo- chondria. 205 ; rude stlf-help. 2oh ; stands genuinely by tlic old formulas, 207; his noble unconscious sincerity. 208; twofold (iosjH'l. of Prudence, and hatred of Cant. 2o<): his Dic- tionary, 210; the brave old .Samuel, 212, ::5V- Jotuns. 20. 41. Kadijah, the good, Mahomet's first Wife, 61, 66. King, the, a summary of all the various figures of Heroism, 225 ; indispensa- ble in all movements of men, 263. Knox's influence on .Scotland, 166; the bravest of Scotchmen, 168; hi-, unassuming career, 169; is sent to the French Galleys, 170; his collo- quies with Queen Mary, 171; vein of drollery, a brother to high and to low, his death, 173. Koran, thi.-, 73. I.amaism, Grand, 5. Leo .\, the elogant Pagan Pope, 152. I.iljerty and Equal. cy, 145, 232. Literary .Men. 17;: in China, 194. Literature, ch.iotic condition -if, 182 ; not our heaviest evil, 195. Luther's birtli and parentage, \a,U: hardship and rigorous m^cessity, death of .Alexis, becomes monk, 147 ; his religious despair, finds a Hible, de- liverance from darkness, 149; Rome. Tetzel. 150: burns the Popes Bull, 153 ; at thL' Diet of Worms, 1 54 ; King of the Reformation, 1 58 ; ' Duke- Georges nine days running,' 161 ; his little daughter's deathbed, his soli- tary Patmos, 162 ; his Portrait, 163. Mahomet's birth, boyhood, and youth, 58: marries Kadijah; quiet, unam- bitious lift', 61 ; divine commission, ('A, ■■ the good Kadij.ih believes him. .Sfid. young .Mi, 66; offences and sor.' strussles. 67 ; flight from Mecca : beinp driven to take the sword, he uses it, 69 ; the Koran, 73 ; a veri- t.ible Hero; Seid's death, S2 ; free- dom from Cant, 83; the infinite nature of Duty, 86. Mary. Queen, and Knox. 171. Afn\/f2 ; a righteous umpire, 70. Novalis. oil Man, 12; lielief, (^U\ Shakspeare, 123. CJdin, the first Norse ' man of genius,' 24 ; historic rumours and guesses, 25 ; how he came to be deified, 2S : invented ' runes," 31 ; Hero, I'rophet, (iod, 32. Olaf, King, and Thor, 45. Original man tlie sincere man, 52, 144. I'aganism, Scandinavian, 4 : not men.' Allegory. ^: Nntiire-worsliip. S. ^4; Hero-worship, 13; crc-ed of our fathers, 18, 42, 44 : Impersonati. 1 of the visil)le workings of .Nature. 20; contrasted witli (Ireek Paganism, 22 ; the first Norsi- i'liiiiker. 24 ; main practical Ik-lief ; indispensable to be brave, 3^1; lieart\ , homely, nigged Mythology: lialder, 'I'lior. 311. 40; Consecration of \'alour. 4(>. I'arliaments. superseded bv lioi.k^, iSS ; Cromwell's P.iiliaments. 2O4. Past, the whoK' the possessiim of the Present, 47. Poi't. tlip. nnl I'roplift. 1,1, ii.|, \2-. I'uetryand I'ro^e,distillCtionot,l;4, 103. Popery, 157. Poverty, advantages of, 117. Priest, the true, a kind of Prophet, 132. Printing, consequences of, 188. I'rivate judgment. 142. Progress of the .'^p<,xies, 135. Prose. -See Poetry. Protest intism, the root of modern i:uroi)eaii History, 142; not dead yet. 157: its living fruit, 165, 220. I'liigatory, noble Catholic conception of, lOi). Puritaniini, founded by Knox, 164; true beginning of .America, 1O5; the one epoch of Scotland, 166; 'Iheoc- r.acy, 175; Puritanism in England, 2.K. 237. 2''o. (Ju.itkery origin.ites nothing, 5, 50; age of, 201 ; Quacks and Dupes, 249. Kii!:;nardl:. 44. Kefornier, the true, 153. Religion, a man's, the chief fact with regard to him, 2; liased on Hero- worship, 13; propagating by the sword. 69; cannot succeed by being 'easy,' So. Revolution, 227; the French, 229, 273. Ricliter. 1 1. Right and Wrong. S7, in. Rousseau, not a strong man; hi> Por- trait, egoism. 212: his passionate ai)p,'als. 21 ( : his Urnks. like himself, uuliealthy ; the Kvangelist of the I'rench Revolution. 215. Scepticism, a spiritual p.iralysis, 195, 204, 230. Scotland awakened into life by Knox, I'j'i. Secret, tlie open, 91. Seid. Mahomet's slave and friend, 60, 82. 370 LECTURES ON HEROES Shalupeare and the Elizabethan Kra, 11$; his all-sufficing intellect, ii8, lai ; his Characters, lao; his Dramas, a part of Nature herself, laj ; hi:; joyful tranquillity and over- flowing love of laughter, 124; his hearty Patriotism, 126; glimpses of the world that was in him, ia6; a heaven-sent Light- Uringer, ij8; a King of Saxondom, 130. Shekinah, Man the true, 13. Silence, the great empire of, 115, 257. Sincerity, better than gracefulness, 35 ; the first characteristic of heroism and originality, 51, 62, 144, 146, 179. Theocracy, a, striven for by all true Reformers, 175, 261. Thor, and his adventures, 21, 39-44 ; his last appearance, 45. Thought, miraculous influence of, 24, 33, 189 ; musical Thought, 94. Thunder. See Thor. Time, the great mystery of, 9. Tolerance, true and false, 159, 17a. Turenne, 90. Universities, 185. Valour, the basis of all virtue, 36, 40 : Norse consecration of, 46 ; Christian valour, 137. Voltaire-worship, 16. Wish, the Norse god, 21 ; enlarged into a heaven by Mahomet, 87. Worms, Luther at, 1 54. Worship, transcendent wonder, 11 See Hero-worship. Zemzem, the Sacred Well, 56. INDEX TO INTRODUCTION AND NOTES Abelard, 345. d'Abrantes, Duchess, 363. accomplished and distinguished,' 'the, 365. 'according to God's own heart,' 308. ' account ' for him, 296. Account of Corsicit, Koswell's, 357. ' a devout imagination,' 343. a Dio spiacenti, 324. Ai/onais, quoted, 301. advertisement, Neptune in, 306. Aegir, 299. aer bruno, 324. Aesthttische Erziehuiig ties Men- scheii, quoted, 354. A Few Wonh about the Eight- eenth Century, 347. Age of Scepticism, 307. Aire/ as a lecturer, xiv. Alford, Dean, xvi. Ali, Mahomet's vizier, 311. Allegory, 294. all, the, a trc;. Ixxvi. ■ All was (Godlike,' 295. allusion, restrained in Heroes, Ixi. Almack's, first series of lectures at, xviii. almsgiving, the Koran on, 316. alti guai, 320. America, Carlyle thinks of lectur- ing in, liv, Iv ; project given up, liv, Iv. American exaggeration, 304. American spelling, Iviii. Anabaptists, 337. Anderson, bibliography of Heroes, defective, Ivi. angels, Juste-mi/ieu, 324. anger, Mahomet's vein of, xxxix. An Inland Voyage, 363. Annan, Schoolmaster in, 328. Annihilation of Self, 310. ' another Isle of Oleron,' 364. Anstey, T. C, reports second course, xxv ; differences in his reports and Hunt's, xxvi; reports to be taken w'th cau- tion, xxvi ; compared v.ith Heroes, liii. ' Apostlehood ' in Carlyle's audi- ence, xvi. apparitions, 295. Appleton's re])rints. hi, Ivii, Iviii. 'appointed patli^,' 513. Arabia first became alive. 317. Arabians at Crenada, 327. Arabian Talts. Carlyle's acquaint- ance with, xxxix. Arabic, Carlyle's desire to know, xxxix. .Archives, Florence, 319. ■11 371 372 LECTURES ON HEROES Arians, Carlyle on, 312. aristocracy, open-minded, xxviii. Arkwright, lecture on, xxix, xxx. Arnold, CalluUs, quoted, jaS ; dis- likes Carlyle's earnestness, Ixxxiv; Luminary of ( arlylc '8 doctrine, Ixxxiv ; quoted, 295. Arundel marble, 301. Asen, AsiaticH, 300. ' A8:^uredly,' 315. 'as the uaktree grows,' 329. Atahualpu. .ncredulity of, jo2. Athanasian controversy, Carlyle oii, 3i.«. d'Aubignc, citt-d, m, 334, 337. audience, ap|)earance of Carlyle's, xix. attitude of, Ixxx. Carlyle on his fourth, xxxviii. effect of Carlyle on, xxvii, 1. elements of, xvi. fourth, nature of, xxxvii. growth of, xxviii, xxix, xxxix. ideas of, Ixxxv, Ixxxvi. sayings of, xxxiv. second, i oUected easily, xxi ; character of, xxii. Augereau, crtiiited with mot, 363. Augustinian monks against iJo- miiiicans, jj.]. Austen, Jane, Ixxxvi. away with, cannot, 331. babbling Avocats. 362. Backwoods, American, 304. Balder, 303. 'ba|)ti-*m he was railed,' 341. Barehones Parliament, 359. 'Baresark,' Carlyle's error as to, 3J5- Hathurst, a 'good hater,' 329. Hayle, a Protestant, xxx. Bayle, Diclionary cjuoted, 320, Beatrice, Dante's love for, intense. xliii. Beautiful higher than the Good, 318. beauty of the harvest-fields, 338. Bellarmine. 332. Bentham, denounced by Carlyle xli. Itenliiamee Utility, 317. Benthamism, spurt at, accidental, liii. lieowulf, 303. ' Better that women weep,' 342. Bible, frequent allusions to, Ixi. Bible references : Gen., 360. Exod., 344. I Sam., 308. I Kings, 310. Job, 30S, 309. 3 '0.311. Ps.. 308. Eccl.. 329. 331, 357. Jer., 30S, 357. •Matt., 293, 3 IS, 335, 344. Luke, 341. John, 344. Acts, 308, 335. Gal., 310. Eph., 347, 355. 2 Thess., 363. Kev., 305. bibliography of Heroes, defective, Ki. liiglim Pilfers quoted, 305. Birrell, A., 348. INDEX TO JNTRODVCTtOU AA'D NOTES 37J Birth-hour, another, 331. bits of black wood, 310. Black Stone, 309. blazingii''i>n from t.'raigfiipnttotli in i ;4, xi. niukt:^ Ikjitiu in Clteliiea, xi. hi.s frieiuls, xii first worl< at « ht-ync Row. xii. loses manusi ript of I In- /•////, // Kevolutii'>t, xii. I-iiMisliers Aiv.x to puljliNh \iii. depression, period of, xiii. ulofjuenre of, xiii, xii. his K(li!it)ur);h address, xiii. professorial positions applied for, xiii. might have been a great teacher, xiii. l)ublication of The J-'n-mh AVr olution, xiii. inviteil ti' lecture in -Ainirica.Niv. considers the Royal Instituiiun. XV. as an indep> ndent lecturer, xv. his own account of his audi- ence. XV. remembered those who helped him, XV. afraid of popul.irify, xv. preparation for his tirst course, xvi. extent f)f first course, xvii. difticulties of, in lecturiii.!,', x\i;i. to lecture extempore, x^•iii. < arlyli , Thtima*., methodn of <>pen. ing. uiK onventional, xviii. v^ltdi. t'lry for his mother, xviii. puti, tuality of, ensured, xviii. first lecture at Almack'a, iviii. I' personal appearance, xix. nci\ou.,i.isn) amused by, xxviii. apl)lauileil ill speaking of Knox. xxviii. impartiality of, xxix. signilii ;int omissions, xxix. Protestantism of, xxx. on French Revolution, xxx. on I.uther, xxx. on Cromwell, xxx. on the emigrant noblesse, xxxii. defens<' of Marie Antoinette, xxxii hard on (iirondist.s, xxxii. iffntix TO ff/TNonrcTiox axd notks 375 Carlyle, Thomas, defemU Marai, xxxiii. does justice to Robespierre, xxxili. eulogy of Danton, xxxiii. praised by Hunt, xxxiii. on hiM audience, xxxiv. on his own lectures, xxxiv. ride to Harrow, xxxiv admitH his succes.s to l':merson, XXXV. thinks of lecturing in America, XXXV. successi of fourth course, xxxv. opinion of lecturing, xxxv. inception of Heroes, xxxvi. journal quoted on Heroes, xxxvi. natuif of hi.s manuscript, xxxvii. success in fourth course, xxxvii. describes fourth audience, xxxviii. successful when excited, xxxviii. on Mahomet, xxxix. reads 1-ane's "Arabian Tales," xxxix. pleased with second lecture, xxxix. views on Mahomet, xl. his view of Christianity, xli. interrupted by Mill, xli. on Dante, xli. on Shaksperc, xli. visited Stratford-on-Avon, xlii. knowkdRe of .Shaksperc, xlii. called • Carlisle,' xlii, 327. reported in the Times, xlii. on the Commedia, xliii. third lecture praised, xliii. repels Maurice, xliii. reporter's opinion of, xliii. <'arlyle, Thomas, on Knox and Luther, xliv. fourth lecture good, xHv. destrilied by Caroline Fox, xlv. Scottish accent noted, xlv. on Boswell, xlvi. on Rousseau, xlvi. "n Johnson, xlvi. on Kurns, xlvi. growth of opinion on Cromwell, xlvii. special knowledge of Napoleon, xlvii. first to declare Cromwell honest, xlviii. varied phrases, xlviii. opinion of sixth lecture, xlviii. allusion to contemporary poli- tics, xlviii. his audience .ippreciative, xlix. admits success to himself, xlix. change of attitude to audience, xlix, 1. successful at last, I. effect on audience, I. method of lecturing, li. use of manuscript, li, n. re.solves to make Heroes a book, li. his own reporter, lii. method of writing out lectures, lii, liii. repetition of lectures, liii. retains impromptus, liii. project of lecturing in America, liv. project given up, Iv. at work on Cromwell, Iv, Ivii. makes Chapman and Hall his publishers, Ivii. MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART (ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2) ^ ^^PPLJEDJU^GE__ aSg"- 1653 East Main Street r^S Jlof^'Ster. New York 14609 USA '•^ (716) 482- OJOO- Phone ^ZB (7'6) 288-5989 -Fa, 376 LECTURES ON HEROES Carlyle, Thomas, winding up Mrs. Welsh's estate, Ivii. sensitive to misprints, Ivii. corrections in second edition of Heroes, Ivii. late changes in text, Iviii. first opinion of Heroes, lix. disparagement of his own work, lix. notion of style for, Ix. restraint of humor, Ixi. of metaphor, Ixi. impression of his voice, Ixii. fondness for triads, Ixii. for plurals, Ixiii. for capitals, Ixiii. for hyphens, Ixiii. for the subjunctive, Ixiii. solidity of his work, Ixiv. blunders in Heroes, Ixiv, Ixv. errors not important, Ixv. trusted too much to memory, Ixv. style colloquial, Ixv. sentence structure careless, Ixvi. excuse for errors, Ixvii. method contrasted with Rus- kin's, Ixvii. objections of Gosse and Traill to, Ixix. argument against objections, Ixx. action in regard to burnt manu- script, Ixx. varies meaning of heroic, Ixxi. choice of heroes criticised, Ixxiii. possibly right, Ixxiii. nature of his insight, Ixxiv. view of Rousseau, Ixxiv. idea of hero justified, Ixxv. on sincerity, Ixxv. Cariyle, Thomas, sense of unreal ity, Ixxvi. aim in Heroes, Ixxvii. his reading of history, Ixxviii. view of heroism, Ixxviii. judgments approved by F. Har rison, Ixxix. work approved by Traill, Ixxix. reversed popular verdict on Ma hornet md Cromwell, Ixxx. review of Croker's BoswelL Ixxx. approved by Vigfusson, Ixxx; and by .Syed Ameer Ali, Ixxv. portrait-painting, Ixxxi. portrayer of epochs, Ixxxi. moralist of nineteenth century, Ixxxii. preacher of righteousness, Ixxxii. criticised adversely by Harrison, :xxii. objections not valid, Ixxxiii. alleged incoherence of, Ixxxiv. Arnold's objection to, Ixxxiv. H. Martineau on, Ixxxiv. L. Stephen on his doctrim, Ixxxiv. his pr .aching talent, Ixxxv. Goethe's opinion of, Ixxxv. repetition of, Ixxxv. compared with Newman, Ixxxvi difficulties overcome, Ixxxvi. his final view of Heroes, Ixxxviii. nature of his appeal, Ixxxviii. and London Library, 327. apology to Mill, 347. article on Xecker quoted, 357 compliment of, 365. confuse.'^ I'halaris and PeriJlu-. 347- INDEX TO INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 377 Carlyle, Thomas, corrected hy Times reporter, 327. dictum, omitted from JAroes, 350. error as to ' Baresark,' 355. error as to Hegira, 312. error regarding Luther, 339. errors of, 319. 322, 323, 324, 325, 345. 347- inaccuracy of, 304, 305, 335, 336, 341. in Luther's room, 337. misquotation of Job, 308. moderation of, 334, 355. on the Arians, 312. quotation from himself, 306, 318, 346, 348. studying Italian, 325. works quoted or cited : Chartism, 347. Cromwell, Letters and Speeches, 340, 3SS^ 356, 358. 359. 360. E.Corr., 328, 331, 336, 345, 347- E.-Lett., 350, 363. Essays : Appendix, 353. Boswell 's Life of Johnson, 293.318.346,348.349.353. 357- Burns, 307, 318, 319, 327, 352, 353- Characteristics, 300, 311, 331, 343. 348. Count Cagliostro, 207, 347. Diamond Necklace, 354. Diderot, 344, 346. Goethe, 3c5, 312, 3r7, 344, 349- Goethe's Death, ^ij. Carlyle, Thomas, Assiiys: (j'oct/ie's irorks, Ixxi, 293, 296, 3'9. 337. 344- /can P,iul Fricdtich A'ichter, =95. 296, 3 '7. 327. 337. 346, 349- /can Pr.ul Friedrich Richter Again, 295, 327. Life and Writings of Werner, 306, 317. Z«M^r'j />.„//«, 335, 336, 337. Mirahcau, 307, 320, 324, 348, 352- NiK.alis, 296, 301, 311, 3,9, 329- On History, 293. Schiller, 349. Signs of the Times, 296, 300, 345. 346. State of German Literature, V7^l^'^^Zl^,lM, 346, 354. Taylor 's Surrey of German Literature, 334, 354, 356. Voltaire, 296, 297, ^09, 364. French RcTolution, The, 296, 2W, 352, 354. 359. 362. Historical Sketches, 340, 358. History of Friedrich II, ^i. Lectwes on Literature {L.L.), 293. 294, 306, 308, 31S, 3r9, 320, 321, 322, 324, 325. 326, 328, 329, 330, 332, 233, 334. 335' 337. 339. 340, 341, 342, 3 7, 36'. 365- Life of Sterling, 332. Meister's Apprenticeship, 329, 354. 356- Meister's Travels, t^i-J. Mcnta.gne and other Essays, 299, 358- 378 LECTURES ON HEROES Carlyle, Thomas, Essays : Noz'alis, 296. Reminiscences, 300. Sartor Resartus, 295, 296, 300, Z^'' 303. 305. 3'o, 311, 318, 332. 346, 347- Carlyle'.s chairman, xviii. Carlyles' Chelsea Home, The, 337. Carlylean doctrine, summarized by Arnold, Ixxxiv; and by Stephen, Ixxxiv. cassock, Luther's recommendation regarding, 336. Catinat, de. Marshal, 349. Cato and his statue, 357. Cavalcante falls, 323. Cecilia, 344. Celia, 344. ' certain genealogy,' 294. Cestus of Venus, 302. Chalmers as a lecturer, xiv. phrase of, 300. Chaos, umpire, 346. Charles I, Carlyle on, xxviii. Chartism, in Carlyle's time, Ixxxv, 347- Chartisms, 347. chasuble and cassock, confused by Carlyle, 336. Chaucer, Emerson's error regard- ing, Ixxix. Chelsea, literary associations of, xii. Cheyne Row, views from, xii. Chinese methods, 346. Choice of Books, The, 347. Choosers of the Slain, 302. Chosroes, 310. Christianity, Carlyle on, 312. Church, changed, 345. Church Liturgy, 346. Cincinnati imprint of Heroes, Ivii Clarendon, on Harebones I'arli.i ment, 359, 364. ' Clear your mind of cant,' 349. Clifford, 345. Coffee-house in Chelsea visitei by Bickerstaff, xii. Coleridge, as a lecturer, xiv. dies in year of Cariyle's Ilegira xi. discursiveness of, xvii. on Luther's ink-bottle, 337. on the Encyclopedie j6o. quoted, 342. remark of, 357. collocations awkward, Ixvi. Colloquia Meusalia quoted, ly^, 339- colloquial, Carlyle's style, Ixv. 'colours, cut-glass.' -■■ ' combing their mane-^,' 298. Comedy, The, of Dante Alighi.i 1. 322. Ruskin on, 321. Comtis quoted, 340. Concordat, effect of, 363. Confessions, Carlyle on Rousseau'^, xlvi. Consecration of Valour, 306. ' Consider the lilies,' 31 8. Constance, Council of, 335. constitution, the French, xxxi. conversion of the .Saxons, 31::. convex-concave mirror, 327. Convocation of the Xotahles, :; ; 1. Conway on Carlyle's use of ni:i:iii script, li, n. 'Co])rostonios,'a naniefor Carly ■. 3'9- jHr INDEX TO INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 37') corbels, bent like, 326. Cornuel, de, Mde., 349. Corpus Poeticum Boreale cited, 298. 299, 300, 303, 304. Corsica Boswell, 356. Corsican lieutenant, 319. Councils of Tre])isond, 300. Count Fathom, written in Chelsea, xii. Courvoisier murder, xxxviii. Cow Adumbla, 303. ' crackling of thorns,' 329. Craigenputtoch, Carlyle, six years at, xi. creation, Norse, 299. Cromwell, Carlyle on, xxvii, xxx. Carlyle's rehabilitation of, xlvii, xlviii, xlix. chosen as subject, xxxvi. commantler-in-chief, 359. concluding speech, 359. confusion of speech, 361. dissolves parliament, 359. ever-calculating hypocrite, 356. ftt.icies about, 355. Hume on, 35S. inauguration, 364. last words, 358. Milton on. 359. mother, 3{)0. opinion of, reversed, Ixxx. passage in Heroes much revised, s J regarding King Charles, 356. crowning mercy, 355. Crozier, J. H., cited, xix, n. culture, value of history in, Ixxviii. cynosure of all eyes, 353. d'Abrantes, Duchess, cited, iG^. Dante, C-irlyle's knowledge of, xlii. Carlyle's service to, Ixxx. Carlyle's study of, xxi. 'goes through hell," 321. epitaph in full, 321. historian of the spiritual worlil xliii. uses of, 327. Danton, xxxii, xxxiii. D'Aubigne, cited, m, 334, 337. de (Irammont in Chelsea, xii. delineation, musical, 318. 'delivering Calases,' 296. ' della bella persona,' 324. Delmas, credited with mot, 363. Denison, Mrs., at lectures On He- roes, xl. De Quincey, quoted, 329. witness of Coleridge's success, xiv. Der Afythus von Thor, 2'/., 299, 304- Desmoulins, Camillf, 354. De Stael, on the Concordat, 363. De Vere, T.iilnes to, xxiii. Devil, 'the, is aware,' 337. Devils, at Worms, 335. Devils, ' the, fled,' 339. ' dew-drops from his mane,' 352. Dickens, Ixxxvi. Carlyle's portrait of, Ixxxi. Diocletian, planting cabbages, 358. Diodorus Siculus, 309. 'discrepancies of national taste,' 3'2- discursiveness of lecturing, xvii. Divine Idea, 318. Doctrine of Motives, 347. 380 LECTUA'ES OAT /lEROES Dominies, wild Saint, 331. Douanier and Voltaire, 296. •doubt,' a Scf^tticism, xlviii, 332. Du Bois, Cardinal, Carlyle on, xxix. Duke George, Luther's defiance of, 32,^. Duke of Weimar, 364. dumb Prophet, 361. Dunce, not a, 328. ' duty of staying at home,' 347. Eager, 299. ears cropt-off, 358. ears of the pot, 299. earth steadied by mountains, 3r3. Eastlake, Lady, on Carlyle's per- sonal appearance, xix. Memoirs of, cited, xix, n. Eck, Johann, 332. Edda, account of, 297. ' Edda,' fanciful etymologies of, 297. Edda, Prose, cited, 297, 302, 303, 304. 305- Edda, i>ryms^vifiu, quoted, 298, 299. Hymiskvi^a, quoted, 299. Educational Province, 316. egotism of Carlyle, Ixix. Eighteenth Century, A Few Words abottt the, 347. Eisenach, Carlyle at, 337. Eliot, Sir John, 355. Elliott, F., XV. Elster-Gate, Luther at, 335. Emerson, invites Carlyle to lecture in America, xiv. as a lecturer, xiv. Carlyle at his lecture, xiv. Emerson, letter of Carlyle to, xxxv told subject of fourth courst xxxvi. completion of Heroes announcet to, liv. kindness to Carlyle, Iv. tells of piracy, Ivi. asks fortranscript of manuscript Ivi. curious error of, Ixxix. philosophy based on Heroes, Ixxxvii. on Napoleon, 361. quoted, 327, 329, 345. Entile, cited, 351. Encyclo/i^die, history of, 360. England, in 1840, Ixxxv, Ixxxvi. English Fairy- Tales, 304. English society before Carlyle, Ixxxiv. Epistola Obscurorum Virorum. 332- Erasmus in Chelsea, xii. Eremites, 331. Essay on Criticism, quoted, 312. Essay on Man, quoted, 310. 'Ever in . . . eye,' 355. exaggeration, American, 304. Examiner, the, on Carlyle's second audience, xxii. reports Courvoisier murder. xxxviii. reports of Carlyle's lecturfs. xxix, XXX, xxxi, xxxii, xxxiii excuse for Carlyle's errors, Ixvii. factor's letters to Burns's familv 352- Faerie Queene, 332. False as a bulletin, 361. INDEX TO lyTKO/yUCTtON AND NOTES 381 Familiar Studiesof Men and Books, 343- ' Fancy of Plato's," 294. Faraday, as a lecturer, xiv. Farinata rises, 323. Faust, cited, 310. Fichte, quoted, 31S, 343, 344. Fielding and kicliardson, com- pared by Johnson, 327. fiery snow, 322. fire-worship, legend exploded, 298. first course of lectures, receipts, XX. FitzGerald, Edward, xvi. •flights of clouds.' 338. ' fond gaillard,' 352. Fontenelle, saying of, 356. • For ail our fighting,' 356. ' Force which is not wo,' 295. ' Four-pence-halfpenny a day,' 348. Fox, Caroline, Sterling and, xxiv. description of, xliv. her world contrasted with Lon- don, xliv. friend of Sterling, xliv. admirer of Carlyle, xliv. reads Chartism, xlv. report of fifth lecture, xlv, xlvi. describes Carlyle, xlv. penetration of, .\lv. notes Carlyle's phrases, xlvi. report of sixth lecture, xlvii. accuracy of reports, xlviii. evidence of, as to omissions, liv. on Lecture V, 353. on end of Lecture VL 365. Her Journals, 343, 345, 349, 350. France needed Danton, xxxiii. Fraticescu da Rimini, 323. Eraser article, first draft of Sartor, Ixxi. Fraser, publishes Iteroet, Iv. death of, Ivii. Freemason's Tavern, 327. French Revolution, bad lecture on, xxxiv. Carlyle on, xxx, xxxi. Carlyle's knowledge of, xlvii. like the Knglish, xxxii. Ennch Rnolution, The, written at Cheyne Row, xii. first manuscript burnt, xii. published in 1837, xiii. Carlyle corrects proofs of, xvi. success of, XX. Carlyle as graphic as, xxiii. loss of manuscript of, shows Carlyle's heroism, Ixx. tjuoted, 299. Friediich the \Vi.se, 333. Friend, The, quoted, 360. Frith, C. H., editor of Hutchin- son Memoirs, 360. on Cromwell, 355. P'rost, Chartist leader, 347. Kroude, at Emerson's lecture, xiv. indicates Carlyle's preparation for Heroes, xxxvi. nature of his biography, Ixix. Carlyle's Life in LoMdon(C.L.L.). 309. 3 '2. 347. 351- Gardiner, Great ^ivil War, cited, 356. Garnett, authoi y foj anecdote, xii. Thomas Carlyle, quoted, 317. Geddes, Jenny, 340. I 382 LKCTURKS ON HEROKS de Genlw, Mde., and Rousseau, 350 f- genuine set of fighters. 356. German, Critics, ji8. general ignorance of, xvii. literature, Carlyle's proficiency in, xvii. Gibbon, mourning over Necker, 357- on Diocletian, 358. used by Carlyle, xxxix. Decline and Fall, quoted, 307, 309. 3'3. 315- cited, ^09, 312, J 1 6. Memoirs, quoted, 357. " Giovanna." " tell my," 326. Girondism, subject of lecture, xxx, xxxi. Girondists, Carlyle on, xxxii. ' given up to a strong delusion,'363. 'glorious Revolution,' 340. God and the Bible, quoted, 295. •God be judge," 359. Godwin, diligent, 359. Goethe, compared with Scott, Ixxiii. his language, 344. on Carlyle's moral force, Ixxxv. on Hamlet, 329. on Shakspere, 327. opinion of Carlylt's knowledge of German, xvii. recognition of, little, 344. Wilhelm MtisUr's Apprentice- ship, 329. Golden Legend, The, 345. Gollancz, I., 304. 'good hater,' 329. Gosse, failure to explain, xxxvi. objections to fferoes, Ixix. Gosse, success of I/erocs, according to, Ixxvii. grammar, Carlyle's liberties with, Ixv, Ixvi. grapeshot, Annandale, xl. Gray's fragments, 303. 'greatest of all,' 296. Greatness of Great Men, On the. Ixxi. Greek religion, Carlyle on, xxvi. Green, Short I/istory 0/ the ling. lish People, cited, 356. Greene, Professor, editor of Car- lyle's lectures, xxiv. quoted, 306. Grimm, erroneous etymology, 300 305- Teutonic Mythology, 298, 3,^^,, 300, 302, 305. Grotius. Dc Vent. Relig. Christ., quoted, 307. Grove, Dictionary 0/ Music, quoted, 32'- grudges all removed, y(^. G uizot. History of France, \„r/:s 3S,J Harrison, Frederic, opinion of r/ie Frtnch Revolution, Ixxxiii. objections to /hroes, Ixxxiii. modest refutation of them, Ixxxiii. curious error of, Ixxxiv, n. cited, 347. on Cromwell, cited, 355. Harrow, Carlyle's ride to, xxxiv. hater, a good, 329. Hazlitt as a lecturer, xiv. 'Heaven with its stars,' 30S. Hegira, 311. Carlyle's error regarding, 312. Heimskrini^la, 300, 302, 303, 305. ' he is resigned,' 338. 'he will never part,' 324. ' Hell will he hotter,' 315. Heraclius, 310. I/ermils, The, 331. Hermoder, 303. hero, defined hy Hume, Ixxi. Carlyle's definition justified, Ixxlv, Ixxv. Men' 'j,'ft's definition. Ixxiv. I Ixxv. jn of, Ixxii. ,49- iverse, 307. inception of, xxxvi. first subjects chosen, xxxvi. relation of lectures to book, xxxvi, XXX vii. C'arlyle's description of writing-, xxxvii. first lecture not the best, x.vxviii, Carlyle pleased with second lec- ture, xxxix. Macready's opinion of second lecture, xl. of r fc • he 10^ Ilirocs, //.soniitl. (I from, xlvi. agreement betw.en lectures and book, xlvi, liv. difference, 1, lii. reported partly by Fra.ser em- ployee, li. to be nuiile into a book. ft. evidence of title-page, lii. sources of, Ijii. reasons for emendations, liii. much exp.-jn(led, liii. each lecture longer than those of iSjS. liii. 1S40, tiiL- year of, liv. process of composition, liv. compluteil. liv, booksellers' oiter, Iv. first edition, icoo < opios, Iv. payment for. I v. sheets sent to .America, hi. pirated in .Ww N'ork, hi. printed in .New N ork ncvvs- paper>, hi. bibliography (,f, obx urc, hi. different edition-, of. Mi. first American edition dLs( ribt-d Ivii. second I-:n,t.;li-li edition, jvii. changes in, hii and n. rcvisi.iii c,f one pas^ag,'. hii. second .\nierican ediiion. hiii. third ,\meriean edition,. so-calkr!, hiii. third i:n,;;li>li cciiiion, hiii. later < lianges in text, hiii. third .American edition, hiii. first .American printir^ of, hiii,n later KiiRli^h editions, lix. rapidity of >ale, lix. many editions not noted, lix. 384 LECT'/KES OAT IlKKOES iltrots, farlyle's first opinion of, lix. •tyle low-pitched, Ix. usual Ntyk, modified for, Ix. earnest tone of Ix, Ixi. humor of, restrained, Ixi. met^hor and allusion re- strained, Ixi. impression of voice, Ixi. popularity accounted for, IxlL triads in, Ixii, Ixiii. *'^ capitals in, Ixiii. hyphenation in, Ixiii. plurals in, Ixiii. almost flimsy in texture, Ixiv. faults of, l^v. style colloquial, Ixv. errors in grammar, Ixv. awkward collocations in, Ixvi. sentence-structure careless, Ixvi. errors of, excused, Ixvii. plan simple, Ixvii. classification not exhaustive, Ixviii. descending scale in, Ixviii. plan of each lecture. Ixviii, ixix. critical objections to, Ixix. Traill's admissions regarding, Ixx, Ixxix. theory of, simple, Ix^j. main idea in Hume, Ixxi. offshoot of Teufelsdrockhian philosophy, Ixxi. early statement of main ideas in, jxxii. novelty of Carlyle's theory in, Ixxii. meanTng of 'hero' varied in, Ixxiii. should include Scott, Ixxiii. /ftroes, insight shown in, Ixxiv. secondary ideas in, Ixxv. first intention lost, Ixxvii. success of, I xxvii . ethical appeal of, Ixxvii. aim of "marrow of hLtory, Ixxvii. critici-sed by F. Harrison, Ixxviii. theory of hero-worship not es- sential to, Ixxviii. judgments of, endorsed by I-. Harrison, Ixxviii. Introduction to history, Ixxviii. purple passages in, Ixxix. heroes of, in new light, Ixxx. regarded as a portrait gallery. Ixxxi. what it is not, Ixxxi stimulus of, Ixxxii. central doctrine may be dis carded, Ixxxii. and Kepresentative Mtn, Ixxxii surcharged with emotion, ixx.xii. threefol d aspect of, ixxxii . ethical value of, Ixxxii. Harrison' <,; ' "•ons to, Ixxxiii. ethic of, i ;,\x\. inflm n«:e of, in geneml, Ixx.wii on Kuskin.Ixxxvii; onl'hilliji^ lirooks, Ixxxvii. popularity of, Ixxxvii. brief history of, Ixxxviii. Carlyle's final opinion ..f. j xxxviii. Centenary edition, 307. heroic, ancient man, Goethe, 31? sixfold classification of, Ixxi. heroism, Carlyle's want of, obj.( tions met, Ixx. the nuriow of history, Ixxviii. tNDKX TO L\r/Ci>.'lX770A' AM) SO n-.S Js.S hero-worship, detintil, Ixxi. anticipated, l.xxiL nt'vtr ceases, x xxvi, Ixxii, I xxvi. proved by parliculars, Ixvvi. ' modern instunns, Ixwi, Carlyleuri doctrini' <>f, misuiukr- stood, Ixxvii. may l)c- discarded from If, roes, Ixxxii. littledinct exhortation to, Ixxxii. used liy lliinn-, 29J. reference to, lijCi. * Ilic cluudor Mantes,' j2t. High Churrh, tumult in. 3(0. High I)uche>SLs, jiy. 'his solitary I'atmos,' ;,;,S. J/istoii, ,/,; A,', J .]/,,,,,,„, . ;fj,s history, /Ahhs, an introiiui timi to, Ixxix. marrow of, Ixxvii value of. Ixxviii. verdicts of, re' t-rscd, 'wx. History of Literature, s< . ond course, xxi. ' His writiuKs.' JJ5. Hodman, j 1 1. Holland, lady, potn.iit of, l\\\i. Holland, Lord, portrait ' i. Ixxvi Holy Alliance, referenii- to, 319. Homoiousion, 312. Hoogstrateii. ;^^2. Horace, f|uotL(l, 303, 3^0. horse-shoe vrin, Malionitt's, 309. house, Carlyli-'s. interest in, xi. Hud, the pnjphet, 313. Hugo's CrcmivfU c'Uijd, 35' Hume, 352. definitK n of hero, Ixxi. influenre of his phrase, Ixxxvii, on Cromwell, 358. Hume (juoieiraii\i li in //,;<', , Ixi. Miiiil, l.iigli, neighbor ot t'arljV, in ' liL-lst.i, xii. fiiend of liyron, xii. I.impoonir of the Regent, xii. origin.d Harold Skimptjle, xii. hero of /,«*/»' KituJ Mc, xii. on ( atlyle's second audience, xxii. his URihoil of rejjorting. xxiv. latf f. r lir-t lecture of third • our^i , \\\ii. nolii'- I .irlylu's manner, xxvii. .1 syinpitiulic listener, xxvii. argiie> a-ainst third lecture. xxwii. (|ualifii -, (li-,appro\ al. xxviii. xxix. impressions of \ arlyle's I'uritan- i-m, xxix. <|uotations from Carlyle's lec- I >iri.--, xxix. (li fi lids \'oliaire a,i;ainst ( arlylc, xxix. til fi-iuU thi' (orondists. xxxii. di-, Ibices with ('atlylc, xxxiii. eulogy of ('arlyie, xxxiii. no ri port of fourth course, xxxvii. judgment of (arlyie, Ixx, n. ''"^'*- .v>l. 3.55- Hutc hinson, < ol.. 3^x3. Huxley, lei lures compared with ' arlyle's, xvii. Hymir, rigS, Hyndt Ktin, 30). hypbtraii-ii!. v.'urlyle's fondness for, Ixiii. I .w, /.AC/t'A'AS O.V ///Ao£S icIialN, liiKlish. limitBil, Ixxxvi. ' If the Kinx," )56. 'If thf Sun," jii. 'If thiiifjc Mam,* jio. • If ihou fo||„w thy star,' jjo. Igdusil. .'yy, J..;. ' Image of his own Drtam,' 301. ' I might havf my hanrst\ 503. KUiihr, J),e, < arlyle'.s fjuotations from, l.xxi. Knight, 1:. !•., (juoted, 294. Ktuxkiui; ,tt tlie date in A/,u/>,t/i quoted, 32'^. Know the men, ^iG. Knox, John, a favorite subject xiiv. a galley slave. 341. and Queen Mary. 342. at .St. Andrew's castle, 340. 'burst into tears,' 341. Carlyle's appreciation of, Ixxx. Carlyh's opinion of, 339. comforts fellow-prisoners, 341. M7J/.V TO is'ri. on revenge. 315. on salutation of [K-acc, 316. Paradise and Hell, 316. 'tall leafy palm trees.' 313. 'revive a dead earth,' 313. 'shaped you,' 314. ships in, 314. ' V'e have compassion,' 314. written on shoulder blades of mutton, 313. KonjH (juoted or cited, 309, 31;, 3'.)' !M. ,115. Ji'''. l\l. Koran, J'tt-lini. />iuoursi-, quoted, 30S, 316. Kfistlin, IJ/e of Luther, ht,. • La carriere ouverte,' 361. ladies at Tarlylc's lectures, xlii. taking notes at, xxiv. lady's song in Com us, 340. La Fere, retjiment, 363. V Allegro cited, 353. lamcnn.iis. ei, .r of, rtgurdinR Dante, 3:1. I ancl'uole. Stanley, . iled, 31 5. I.angliort'i's I'luiaidi, -jo. ',57. I.angu.ige. .\d.iin Smitli on, 301. Lansdowne, Man loness of, xv. lardnef, ll.iutlhoi'k ,l. )^'5' laud dedii ating church, 355 /..//// l\-neri\, 319, leading, fruit «>f, 331. I.tilurii mi til,- Uislcry 0/ I.itfra- lure, pul)li>he(l in part liy I'rofessor l>o\vden, xxiv, n. used in /A >o,s, liii. cited or ijuoted, 393. 21)4. 506, 31S. 319, 3J0. 5JI, ^22, J23, .5-4. ,525, 5j6, 3j8. 32.> 350, n^' J3J. 334. 335. iifi^ 3 i7. 340. 341. 34-^ 347. 36'. 3''5- Lectures, first series, sul)jects of, xvii, M length of. liii, not reported, li. plan of eai h. Ixviii. |\ix lecturing, t'ariyle's vi. >. oi. xxxv. ' i older Te ti„, Oder die IVei/ie Jer Kraft, 306. Macanlay on Boswell, Ixxx. machine of the universe, 299. Macready, opinion of second lec- ture, xl. 'made me lean,' 321. Mahomet, an impostor, 307. can work no miracles, 313. Carlyle's defence of, xli. C arlyle's first view of, xxxix. chosen as subject, xxxvi. escapes, 311. highest joys, spiritual, 316. his Heaven and Hell, sensual. 3r6. his last words, 314. horse-shoe vein, 309. Inanity, 30S. lamentation over Seid, 315. lecture, success of, xxxix. not sensual, 314. opinion of, reversed, Ixxx. payment of three drachms, 315. saying of, t,t^<^. Malebolgf, 320. Mallet, Northern Antiquities, cited, 299, 300. 302. 303, 304, 305. Mallock, argument for history. Ixxviii. •man that walketh,' 308. mannerisms in //eroes, Iviii. manuscript, Carlyle's use of, li, n. ^^arat, xxxii, xxxiii. Marie Antoinette, story of needle, xxxii. Martineau, Harriet, xv. literary success of. xiii. on Carlyle's appearance, xix. on Carlyle's portraits. Ixxxi, n. on Knglish society before Car- lyle, Ixxxiv, Ixxxvi. INDEX TO JNTKODUCTIOA- AND NOTES :}89 Mary de Clifford, 345. Mary Queen of Scnts, 342. masters of their time, heroes, Ixxv. Maurice, F. I)., i,, Carlyle's first audience, xvi. his opinion of the second course, xxiii. opinion of the Mahomet lecture, xl, xli. repelled by third lecture, xliii. thinks Carlyle in danger, xliv. his disgust at vogue of Heroes, Ixxvii. meaning of his complaint, Ixxxvii. Maurice, Priscilla, at lectures On Heroes, xl. Mayflower, error regarding, 339. McCrie, Life of Knox. 341, 342. * measure by a scale of perfection,' 354- Mecca, flight from, 312. Meditations at Versailles, 349. Melville's Diary, 342. ' mere quackery,' 203. metaphor restrained in Iferoes, Ixi. Michelet, 332, i2,h 334. ll(^, 337. l3^ 339- Mill, Harriet, at Carlyle's lectures, xlv. Mill, J. S., interrupts Carlyle, xli, (Carlyle's apology to, 347. Milnes, Monckton, on success of second course, xxiii. to assist, XV. Milton, sonnet, cited, 355. on Cromwell, 359. Mimer-stithy, 304. Mirabeau, xxxi, xxxii, 307. Miraiieau, a possible Cromwell, xxxii. subject of lecture, xxx. Miracles, Age of, past, 332. Mahomet no worker of, 313. Mohammed, Life and Teachings of, quoted, 310, 311. Speeches and Table- Talk of, cited, 313. .Mohammedanism sincere, Ixxv. Monarchies of Man, 355. money, omnipotence of, 346. Montaigne cited, 349. Montegut, detiniti««rwi/ quoted and £ited, 312. Pope's-( 'oncordat, 363. popularity of Heroes, Ixii. I'ortman Scjuare, second course at. xxi. third course at, .xxvi. Portrait of Dante, by (Wotto, 319. portraits, Carlyle's, Ixxxi. pretension of scanning, 310. Prideaux, Humphrey, 313. 'True Nature of Imposture quoted, 307, 309, 314; cited, 3'3- Pride's Purges, 3 58. I'riniate of Mngl-ind, 346. Truuipaux l-.viiiemens, 363. printers, American, of Heroes, Iviii. I'rior, Dante as, 319. Progress of Species, 331. Protestantism of Carlyle. xxx. mountain of, shakes, 326. Piiri^atorio (juoted, 325, 326. I'urgatory, in ocean, 331. Puritanism, Carlyle's fairness to, xxix. ("arlyle's study of, xlvii. Cariyle on, xxviii. Puritans, genuine set of fighters, 35^'- Queen Antoinette and Voltaire, 296. Queens' Gardens contrasted with Heroes, Ixviii. Qutiitus Fixiein, 295, 346. 353. Racine's death. 354. radicalism, Carlyle's. 294. Ragnarok, 305. Ranelagh, Johnson at, 347. rank, the guinea-stamp, 353. 392 LECTURES ON HEROES Rash-'all quoted, 1'^:^, 345. recruiting for Carlylt's lectures, xv. RedgauntUt cited, 309. red pinnacle, 322. Reformation, History of, cited, ^t,^, 334- Reformation in Scotland quoted, 34'. 342. Reform Bill, a revolution, Ixxxv. Regent, ' Adonis of Fifty,' xii. 'Religion cannot pass away,' 364. Reminiscences, portraits in, Ixxxi, 300. reporters, Carlyle expects help from, li. Representative Men, 327, 329, 361. derived from Iferoes, Ixxxii. ' representing gold,' 296. Republic cited, 294. Republic, The New, ciced, Ixxviii. Researches into the Early I/ntory of Mankind cited, 298. revenge, the Koran on, 315. revolution, men of, carried away by it, 336. Revolutions of Modern Europe, xxvi. ribs of death, 340. Richardson and Fielding com- pared by Johnson, 327. Richter says, 337. rider's horse, 311. Robertson, History of America, quoted, 302. Robespierre, xxxii. Robinson, address to Pilgrims, 339. Rogers, in first audience, xvi. Roland, subject of lecture, xxx. Rome, Luther at, 334. Rotneo and Juliet quoted, 352. ' rose to victory,' 348. Rossetti, W. M., 321. Rousseau and Mde. de Genlis, 350 f. appeals to mothers, 351. Carlyle's treatment of, xlvii. Carlyle's insight into, Ixxiv. compared with Scott, Ixxiii. sincere, Ixxv. stealing ribbon. 351. Royal Institution, Cokridge at. xiv. Rump Parliament, dismissal, 35S. Runes, 302. Ruskin, influence of Heroes on, Ixxxv ii. method contrasted with far- lyle's, Ixvii. treatment of audience. I. Russell, Lord William, nmrder or. xxxviii. Sabeans. 308. Sxmund, 297. Saint Helena, Xapoleon in, 361, ■Sale, used i)y Carlyle, xx.xix. Salisbury, Bishop of, at Carlyle's lectures, xl. Sand, George, referred to, 351. Sansculottism, xxxii. good lecture on, xxxiv. Sartor Resartus, 295, 296, joo, 301, 303. 305, 3'0. 311, 3i,S, 332. 346, 347. anticipated in part, Ixxi. Anstey's interest in, xxv. contains Heroes in embryo. Ixxi, Ixxii. features of style in, Ix. INDEX TO INTKODUCTION AND NOTES 193 Saunders and Ottley, offer for //>- fp^s, Iv. savans, Hourrieiuie tells of, 361. Saxo Grammaticus, 300, 31S. Saxons, conversion of, 31^. scene at lecture, xli. Sceptical Century, 347. Schiller, Cffirr Aiimnth uitd IViinic, lited, 302. Scholar, 7'/4,' Nattire of tlu; tiuoted. 3'S- 34;,. 3-}4- Schoolmaster, crabbed old, 328. Schweidnitz Fort, 331. Scott, Ciirlyle's disparagement of. hero as man of letters. Ixxiii. Life of Xijfoleon cited, 363. Scotticism, 'doubt,' xlviii, 332. Scottish exiles in England, xi. second course of lectures longest and best paid, xxvi. price two guineas, xx. receipts, xxiv. reported by Anstey, xxv. subjects of, xxi, n. twelve, XX. Sensations if /tali,- (|wotfd. 363. .sentence structure, careless, Ixvi. Sergius, 309. Serpent queller. ^ ;.:. Sisamc iiiiti l.ilics cited, pi. se\en pounds, Hurns's wages, 353- 'shaking of the spear,' 35:. Sliikisf'care„Life of, J.ee's. 327. Shakspere and the Indian Kmpire. xliii. Carlyle's lectures on, .\lii. characters <;f, like watches, 3J;. De Quincey on, 3^9. Shakspere, Kmerson on, 329, Goethe on, 327. greatest of Intellects, 328. intellect of, unconscious, 328. Shekinah. Carlyle's error regard- ing, 2<>s. the true, 295. Shelley (pioted, 301. ' shoes at ( )xford,' Jnhn.son's. 348. shouiderlilades of mutton, 313. Siflcidas, translation from, 327. Siiliman, success as lecturer, xiv. 'sincerest of poems," 321. Hucerity, Carlylean doctrine of, Ixxv. Smith, Adam, 301. Smith, Sydney, as a lecturer, xiv. Smollett in Chelsea, xii. Snorro, 207. society, London, few in number, Ixxxvi. soldier and hero, synonyms, Ixxii. 'sold (;ver counter.s," 295. Solomon says, 357. Sordello mistaken for Latini, 322. Spanish voyagers, 2r>8. Species, Progress of, 331. Sf'cimen I/istorur Arahimi, 307, 30S. Speddipg a.ssisis in collecting audience, xv. ■.speech is crcat," -,;■). SpeeJwtll, 339. spelling, Carlyle's American, Iviii. Spur/heim, success as lecturer, xiv. St. .Viulrew's, Kno.v at, 340. St. Clement Panes, 348. Stephen, I,., summary of Carlylean doctrine, Ixxxiv. 394 LECTURES ON HEROES Sterling, John, xvi. and Caroline Fox, xxiv, xliv. observes ladies taking notes, xxiv. Stevenson, R. i,., j^, Stewart, I'rofessor. on Hums, 5 = . 'stifle him,' 296. 'still small voice," 510. Storch, image-breaker, 53;. 'strain your neck,' 304. Strength is mournfully denied, 553. 'strip your ixjuis Quatorze,' 349.'' stripping-off, 2i)i. Sturlunga Sas^a cited, 305. style, features of Carlyie's, Ix. of Heroes, low-pitchud, Ix, ixii, Ixiv. subjunctive, Carlyie's fondness for, Ixiii. success of Heroes as lectures, xlix. 'succession of falls,' 30S. summary and index, not in Heroea, Iviii. summary to Heroes not needed, Ixix. sun, done under, 331. Swedenborg, Emerson on, Ixxxii, Syed Ameer Ali, approval of Car- lyle, Ixxx. quoted, 310. 311, 312. sympatheix ink, 300. Table-Talk of Coleridge quoted, 34-- Tabdc, War of, 315. 'talent of silence,' 350. tavern-vaiters and Voltaire, inu. Taylor, Henry, xv. Taylor's, Mrs., maid burns Car- lyie's manuscript, xii. Tempesi, CaHyle fond of quoting. xlii. Tennyson, xvi. on social wants, Ixxxvi. Pruuesi (juoted, 30.S. Tenth of August, ^Uz. terrestrial libd, 334. Tetztl's Pardons, ij- >,« ihailur.iy, adrawingof, 34,,. at second course, xxii. xxiv. lectures at Willjs'.s, xiv. 7y,eory 0/ Moral Sc„t,me,U<. :„,. ' the third man,' 341,. •They? what are they?' 343. Thialfi, 304. nibet. Ham, /to,,-, Tra-'eh ,„, 295. Thibet methods, 2i<4. Thibet, Titrncr's Trav.is ,„, 293. thimble, Nanna's, 30;. third course, subject of, xxvi. 'This month,' 35;. Tlior, 2()S. andOlaf Trygvas.son, 305. 'brows.' 305. description of. 304. expeditions, 30 j. meaning of, ^''^^i- three-times-til lee. 340. TAroug/, the Lookwg.Giass cited, ?A0. thunder-hammer, ;^-;. Ticknor, his opinion oi Carlyle, xxiii. H,st,„y of Sra,„sh Literature quoted, 301. Time, mystery of, .'95. rimes report of third lecture, xlii. Times reporter corrects Carlyle, • Tolerance has to tolerate, 342. IXDEX TO INTKODLXnox AXD XOTES J9S Tombs in In/crno, 322. Torf.vu^, 500. Tract AC, 336. Traill, II. 1),, admission legardinK Uitofs, Ixxix. disparaging, Ixx. failure to explain, xxxvi. misunderstands hero-worship, Ixxvii. objections to Heroes, Ixix. objections anticipated, 507. transitory ).;arinent, jio. Trebizond, Carlyle's error regard- ing. JOG. Tree, Machine, -,47. 'treniolar dell' onde,' },2y Tren( h, .\rLlil)ishop. xvi. hears report of lecturr, xx\ix. to Wilherforce, xxxviii. triads, use of, Ixii, Tristiiim ShaiiJy, J95. Troilus