It is clear, however, that with this simple circ.u.mstance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions of the business from top to bottom were changed. Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Universities, or superseded them! The Teacher needed not now to gather men personally round him, that he might _speak_ to them what he knew: print it in a Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn it!--Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in Speech; even writers of Books may still, in some circ.u.mstances, find it convenient to speak also,--witness our present meeting here! There _is_, one would say, and must ever remain while man has a tongue, a distinct province for Speech as well as for Writing and Printing. In regard to all things this must remain; to Universities among others. But 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 clear footing for the Nineteenth Century as the Paris one did for the Thirteenth, has not yet come into existence. If we think of it, all that a University, or final highest School can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing,--teach us to _read_. We learn to _read_, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place where we go to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.
But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the introduction of Books. The Church is the working recognised Union of our Priests or Prophets, of those who by wise teaching guide the souls of men. While there was no Writing, even while there was no Easy-writing or _Printing_, the preaching of the voice was the natural sole method of performing this. But now with Books!--He that can write a true Book, to persuade England, is not he the Bishop and Archbishop, the Primate of England and of All England?
I many a time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these _are_ the real working effective Church of a modern country. Nay not only our preaching, but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by means of Printed Books? The n.o.ble sentiment which a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious words, which brings melody into our hearts,--is not this essentially, if we will understand it, of the nature of worship? There are many, in all countries, who, in this confused time, have no other method of worship. He who, in any way, shows us better than we knew before that a lily of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it us as an effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; as the _handwriting_, made visible there, of the great Maker of the Universe? He has sung for us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more he who sings, who says, or in any way brings home to our heart the n.o.ble doings, feelings, darings and endurances of a brother man! He has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal _from the altar_.
Perhaps there is no worship more authentic.
Literature, 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 revelation" of the G.o.dlike in the Terrestrial and Common. The G.o.dlike does ever, in very truth, endure there; is brought out, now in this dialect, now in that, with various degrees of clearness: all true gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or unconsciously, doing so. The dark stormful indignation of a Byron, so wayward and perverse, may have touches of it; nay the withered mockery of a French sceptic,--his mockery of the False, a love and worship of the True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a Shakspeare, of a Goethe; the cathedral-music of a Milton! They are something too, those humble genuine lark-notes of a Burns,--skylark, starting from the humble furrow, far overhead into the blue depths, and singing to us so genuinely there! For all true singing is of the nature of worship; as indeed all true _working_ may be said to be,--whereof such _singing_ is but the record, and fit melodious representation, to us. Fragments of a real "Church Liturgy" and "Body of Homilies," strangely disguised from the common eye, are to be found weltering in that huge froth-ocean of Printed Speech we loosely call Literature! Books are our Church too.
Or turning now to the Government of men. Witenagemote, old Parliament, was a great thing. The affairs of the nation were there deliberated and decided; what we were to _do_ as a nation. But does not, though the name Parliament subsists, the parliamentary debate go on now, everywhere and at all times, in a far more comprehensive way, _out_ of Parliament altogether? Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters" Gallery yonder, there sat a _Fourth Estate_ more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,--very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes necessarily out of Writing, I say often, is equivalent to Democracy: invent Writing, Democracy is inevitable. Writing brings Printing; brings universal every-day extempore Printing, as we see at present. Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation, becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisite thing is, that he have a tongue which others will listen to; this and nothing more is requisite. The nation is governed by all that has tongue in the nation: Democracy is virtually _there_. Add only, that whatsoever power exists will have itself, by and by, organised; working secretly under bandages, obscurations, obstructions, it will never rest till it get to work free, unenc.u.mbered, visible to all. Democracy virtually extant will insist on becoming palpably extant.--
On all sides, are we not driven to the conclusion that, of the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful and worthy are the things we call Books! Those poor bits of rag-paper with black ink on them;--from the Daily Newspaper to the sacred Hebrew BOOK, what have they not done, what are they not doing!--For indeed, whatever be the outward form of the thing (bits of paper, as we say, and black ink), is it not verily, at bottom, the highest act of man"s faculty that produces a Book? It is the _Thought_ of man; the true thaumaturgic virtue; by which man works all things whatsoever. All that he does, and brings to pa.s.s, is the vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic and tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One;--a huge immeasurable Spirit of a THOUGHT, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to _think_ of the making of that brick.--The thing we called "bits of paper with traces of black ink," is the _purest_ embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder it is, in all ways, the activest and n.o.blest.
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 _Senatus Academicus_ 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 place to the Practical. If Men of Letters _are_ so incalculably 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!
Whatsoever thing, as I said above, has virtual unnoticed power will castoff its wrappages, bandages, and step-forth one day with palpably articulated, universally visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and take the wages, of a function which is done by quite another: there can be no profit in this; this is not right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the _making_ of it right,--what a business, for long times to come! Sure enough, this that we call Organisation of the Literary Guild is still a great way off, enc.u.mbered 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 regulation, 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 one man"s faculty; it is that of many successive men turned earnestly upon it, that will bring-out even an approximate solution. What the best arrangement were, none of us could say. But if you ask, Which is the worst? I answer: This which we now have, that Chaos should sit umpire in it; this is the worst. To the best, or any good one, there is yet a long way.
One remark I must not omit, That royal or parliamentary grants of money are by no means the chief thing wanted! To give our Men of Letters stipends, endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little towards the business. On the whole, one is weary of hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be poor; that there ought to be Literary Men poor,--to show whether they are genuine or not! Mendicant Orders, bodies of good men doomed to _beg_, were inst.i.tuted in the Christian Church; a most natural and even necessary development of the spirit of Christianity. It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly Distress and Degradation. We may say, that he who has not known those things, and learned from them the priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go barefoot, in coa.r.s.e 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 n.o.bleness of those who did so had made it honoured of some!
Begging is not in our course at the present time: but for the rest of it, who will say that a Johnson is not perhaps the better for being poor? It is needful for him, at all rates, to know that outward profit, that success of any kind is _not_ the goal he has to aim at.
Pride, vanity, ill-conditioned egoism of all sorts, are bred in his heart, as in every heart; need, above all, to be cast-out of his heart,--to be, with whatever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from it, as a thing worthless. Byron, born rich and n.o.ble, made-out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. Who knows but, in that same "best possible organisation" as yet far off, Poverty may still enter as an important element? What if our Men of Letters, Men setting-up to be Spiritual Heroes, were still _then_, as they now are, a kind of "involuntary monastic order;" bound still to this same ugly Poverty,--till they had tried what was in it too, till they had learned to make it too do for them! Money, in truth, can do much, but it cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and confine it; and even spurn it back, when it wishes to get farther.
Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper season for them, the fit a.s.signer of them, all settled,--how is the Burns to be recognised that merits these? He must pa.s.s through the ordeal, and prove himself.
_This_ ordeal; this wild welter of a chaos which is called Literary Life; this too is a kind of ordeal! There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower cla.s.ses of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there. The manifold, inextricably complex, universal struggle of these const.i.tutes, and must const.i.tute, what is called the progress of society. For Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to regulate that struggle?
There is the whole question. To leave it as it is, at the mercy of blind Chance; a whirl of distracted atoms, one cancelling the other; one of the thousand arriving saved, nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine lost by the way; your royal Johnson languishing inactive in garrets, or harnessed to the yoke of Printer Cave; your Burns dying broken-hearted as a Gauger; your Rousseau driven into mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by his paradoxes: this, as we said, is clearly enough the _worst_ regulation. The _best_, alas, is far from us!
And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming; advancing on us, as yet hidden in the bosom of centuries: this is a prophecy one can risk.
For so soon as men get to discern the importance of a thing, they do infallibly set about arranging it, facilitating, forwarding it; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, they have accomplished that. I say, of all Priesthoods, Aristocracies, Governing Cla.s.ses at present extant in the world, there is no cla.s.s comparable for importance to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a fact which he who runs may read,--and draw inferences from. "Literature will take care of itself," answered Mr Pitt, when applied-to for some help for Burns. "Yes," adds Mr Southey, "it will take care of itself; _and of you too_, if you do not look to it!"
The result to individual Men of Letters is not the momentous one; they are but individuals, an infinitesimal fraction of the great body; they can struggle on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. But it deeply concerns the whole society, whether it will set its _light_ on high places, to walk thereby; or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways of wild waste (not without conflagration), as heretofore!
Light is the one thing wanted for the world. Put wisdom in the head of the world, the world will fight its battle victoriously, and be the best world man can make it. I call this anomaly of a disorganic Literary Cla.s.s the heart of all other anomalies, at once product and parent; some good arrangement for that would be as the _punctum saliens_ of a new vitality and just arrangement for all. Already, in some European countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some beginnings of an arrangement for the Literary Cla.s.s; indicating the gradual possibility of such. I believe that it is possible; that it will have to be possible.
By far the most interesting fact I hear about the Chinese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, but which excites endless curiosity even in the dim state: this namely, that they do attempt to make their Men of Letters their Governors! It would be rash to say, one understood how this was done, or with what degree of success it was done. All such things must be very unsuccessful; yet a small degree of success is precious; the very attempt how precious! There does seem to be, all over China, a more or less active search everywhere to discover the men of talent that grow up in the young generation. Schools there are for every one: a foolish sort of training, yet still a sort. The youths who distinguish themselves in the lower school are promoted into favourable stations in the higher, that they may still more 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; but there is no doubt they _have_ some Understanding, without which no man can!
Neither is Understanding a _tool_, as we are too apt to figure; "it is a _hand_ which can handle any tool." Try these men: they are of all others the best worth trying.--Surely there is no kind of government, const.i.tution, revolution, social apparatus or arrangement, 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 const.i.tutions and revolutions, if they have any aim. For the man of true intellect, as I a.s.sert and believe always, is the n.o.blehearted man withal, the true, just, humane and valiant man. Get _him_ for governor, all is got; fail to get him, though you had Const.i.tutions plentiful as blackberries, 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. But we are fallen into strange times; these things will require to be speculated upon; to be rendered practicable, to be in some way put in practice. These and many others. On all hands of us, there is the announcement, audible enough, that the old Empire of Routine has ended; that to say a thing has long been, is no reason for its continuing to be. The things which have been are fallen into decay, are fallen into incompetence; large ma.s.ses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, are no longer capable of living at all by the things which have been. When millions of men can no longer by their utmost exertion gain food for themselves, and "the third man for thirty-six weeks each year is short of third-rate potatoes," the things which have been must decidedly prepare to alter themselves!--I will now quit this of the organisation of Men of Letters.
Alas, the evil that pressed heaviest on those Literary Heroes of ours was not the want of organisation for Men of Letters, but a far deeper one; out of which, indeed, this and so many other evils for the Literary Man, and for all men, had, as from their fountain, taken rise. That our Hero as Man of Letters had to travel without highway, companionless, through an inorganic chaos,--and to leave his own life and faculty lying there, as a partial contribution towards _pushing_ 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 _spiritual paralysis_, so we may name it, of the Age in which his life lay; whereby his life too, do what he might, was half-paralysed!
The Eighteenth was a _Sceptical_ Century; in which little word there is a whole Pandora"s Box of miseries. Scepticism means not intellectual Doubt alone, but moral Doubt; all sorts of _in_fidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since the world began, was a life of Heroism more difficult for a man. That was not an age of Faith,--an age of Heroes!
The very possibility of Heroism had been, as it were, formally abnegated in the minds of all. Heroism was gone forever; Triviality, Formulism and Commonplace were come forever. The "age of miracles" had been, or perhaps had not been; but it was not any longer. An effete world; wherein Wonder, Greatness, G.o.dhood could not now dwell;--in one word, a G.o.dless world!
How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in this time,--compared not with the Christian Shakspeares and Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skalds, with any species of believing men! The living TREE Igdrasil, with the melodious prophetic waving of its world-wide boughs, deep-rooted as Hela, has died-out into the clanking of a World-MACHINE. "Tree" and "Machine": contrast these two things. I, for my share, declare the world to be no machine! I say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion "motives," self-interests, checks, balances; that there is something far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at all!--The old Norse Heathen had a truer notion of G.o.d"s-world than these poor Machine-Sceptics: the old Heathen Norse were _sincere_ men. But for these poor Sceptics there was no sincerity, no truth. Half-truth and hearsay was called truth.
Truth, for most men, meant plausibility; to be measured by the number of votes you could get. They had lost any notion that sincerity was possible, or of what sincerity was. How many Plausibilities asking, with unaffected surprise and the air of offended virtue, What! am not I sincere? Spiritual Paralysis, I say, nothing left but a Mechanical life, was the characteristic of that century. For the common man, unless happily he stood _below_ his century and belonged to another prior one, it was impossible to be a Believer, a Hero; he lay buried, unconscious, under these baleful influences. To the strongest man, only with infinite struggle and confusion was it possible to work himself half-loose; and lead as it were, in an enchanted, most tragical way, a spiritual death-in-life, and be a Half-Hero!
Scepticism is the name we give to all this; as the chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Concerning which so much were to be said! It would take many Discourses, not a small fraction of one Discourse, to state what one feels about that Eighteenth Century and its ways. As indeed this, and the like of this, which we now call Scepticism, is precisely the black malady and life-foe, against which all teaching and discoursing since man"s life began has directed itself: the battle of Belief against Unbelief is the never-ending battle! Neither is it in the way of crimination that one would wish to speak. Scepticism, for that century, we must consider as the decay of old ways of believing, the preparation afar off for new better and wider ways,--an inevitable thing. We will not blame men for it; we will lament their hard fate. We will understand that destruction of old _forms_ is not destruction of everlasting _substances_; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning.
The other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, of Bentham"s theory of man and man"s life, I chanced to call it a more beggarly one than Mahomet"s. I am bound to say, now when it is once uttered, that such is my deliberate opinion. Not that one would mean offence against the man Jeremy Bentham, or those who respect and believe him. Bentham himself, and even the creed of Bentham, seems to me comparatively worthy of praise. It is a determinate _being_ what all the world, in a cowardly, half-and-half manner, was tending to be. Let us have the crisis; we shall either have death or the cure. I call this gross, steam-engine Utilitarianism an approach towards new Faith. It was a laying down of cant; a saying to oneself: "Well then, this world is a dead iron machine, the G.o.d of it Gravitation and selfish Hunger; let us see what, by checking and balancing, and good adjustment of tooth and pinion, can be made of it!" Benthamism has something complete, manful, in such fearless committal of itself to what it finds true; you may call it Heroic, though a Heroism with its _eyes_ put out! It is the culminating point, and fearless ultimatum, of what lay in the half-and-half state, pervading man"s whole existence in that Eighteenth Century. It seems to me, all deniers of G.o.dhood, and all lip-believers of it, are bound to be Benthamites, if they have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an _eyeless_ Heroism: the Human Species, like a hapless blinded Samson grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps convulsively the pillars of its Mill; brings huge ruin down, but ultimately deliverance withal. Of Bentham I meant to say no harm.
But this I do say, and would wish all men to know and lay to heart, that he who discerns nothing but Mechanism in the Universe has in the fatalest way missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all G.o.dhood should vanish out of men"s conception of this Universe seems to me precisely the most brutal error,--I will not disparage Heathenism by calling it a Heathen error,--that men could fall into.
It is not true; it is false at the very heart of it. A man who thinks so will think _wrong_ about all things in the world; this original sin will vitiate all other conclusions he can form. One might call it the most lamentable of delusions,--not forgetting Witchcraft itself!
Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil: but this worships a dead iron Devil; no G.o.d, not even a Devil!--Whatsoever is n.o.ble, divine, inspired, drops thereby out of life. There remains everywhere in life a despicable _caput-mortuum_; the mechanical hull, all soul fled out of it. How can a man act heroically? The "Doctrine of Motives" will teach him that it is, under more or less disguise, nothing but a wretched love of Pleasure, fear of Pain; that Hunger, of applause, of cash, of whatsoever victual it may be, is the ultimate fact of man"s life. Atheism, in brief;--which does indeed frightfully punish itself. The man, I say, is become spiritually a paralytic man; this G.o.d-like Universe a dead mechanical steam-engine, all working by motives, checks, balances, and I know not what; wherein, as in the detestable belly of some Phalaris"-Bull of his own contriving, he the poor Phalaris sits miserably dying!
Belief I define to be the healthy act of a man"s mind. It is a mysterious indescribable process, that of getting to believe;--indescribable, as all vital acts are. We have our mind given us, not that it may cavil and argue, but that it may see into something, give us clear belief and understanding about something, whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway believe that!
All manner of doubt, inquiry, [Greek: skepsis] 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 _getting_ to know and believe. Belief comes out of all this, above ground, like the tree from its hidden _roots_. But now if, even on common things, we require that a man keep his doubts _silent_, and not babble of them till they in some measure become affirmations or denials; how much more in regard to the highest things, impossible to speak of in words at all!
That a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that debating and logic (which means at best only the manner of _telling_ us your thought, 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 _overturn_ the tree, and instead of green boughs, leaves, and fruits, show us ugly taloned roots turned-up into the air,--and no growth, only death and misery going on!
For the Scepticism, as I said, is not intellectual only; It is moral also; a chronic atrophy and disease of the whole soul. A man lives by believing something; not by debating and arguing about many things. A sad case for him when all that he can manage to believe is something he can b.u.t.ton in his pocket, and with one or the other organ eat and digest! Lower than that he will not get. We call those ages in which he gets so low the mournfulest, sickest, and meanest of all ages. The world"s heart is palsied, sick: how can any limb of it be whole?
Genuine Acting ceases in all departments of the world"s work; dextrous Similitude of Acting begins. The world"s wages are pocketed, the world"s work is not done. Heroes have gone out; quacks have come in.
Accordingly, what Century, since the end of the Roman world, which also was a time of scepticism, simulacra and universal decadence, so abounds with Quacks as that Eighteenth! Consider them, with their tumid sentimental vapouring about virtue, benevolence,--the wretched Quack-squadron, Cagliostro at the head of them! Few men were without quackery; they had got to consider it a necessary ingredient and amalgam for truth. Chatham, our brave Chatham himself, comes down to the House, all wrapt and bandaged; he "has crawled out in great bodily suffering," and so on;--_forgets_, says Walpole, that he is acting the sick man; in the fire of debate, s.n.a.t.c.hes his arm from the sling, and oratorically swings and brandishes it! Chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic life, half hero, half quack, all along. For indeed the world is full of dupes; and you have to gain the _world"s_ suffrage! How the duties of the world will be done in that case, what quant.i.ties of error, which means failure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to many, will gradually acc.u.mulate in all provinces of the world"s business, we need not compute.
It seems to me, you lay your finger here on the heart of the world"s maladies, when you call it a Sceptical World. An insincere world; a G.o.dless 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 consolation in looking at the miseries of the world, is that this is altering. Here and there one does now find a man who knows, as of old, that this world is a Truth, and no Plausibility and Falsity; that he himself is alive, not dead or paralytic; and that the world is alive, instinct with G.o.dhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the beginning of days! One man once knowing this, many men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It lies there clear, for whosoever will take the _spectacles_ off his eyes and honestly look, to know! For such a man, the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed Products, is already past: a new century is already come. The old unblessed Products and Performances, as solid as they look, are Phantasms, preparing speedily to vanish. To this and the other noisy, very great-looking Simulacrum with the whole world huzzahing at its heels, he can say, composedly stepping aside: Thou art not _true_; thou art not extant, only semblant; go thy way!--Yes, hollow Formulism, gross Benthamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is visibly and even rapidly declining. An unbelieving Eighteenth Century is but an exception,--such as now and then occurs.
I prophesy that the world will once more become _sincere_; a believing world: with _many_ Heroes in it, a heroic world! It will then be a victorious world; never till then!
Or indeed what of the world and its victories? Men speak too much about the world. Each one of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not a Life of his own to lead? One Life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us forevermore! It were well for _us_ to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and realities. The world"s being saved will not save us; nor the world"s being lost destroy us. We should look to ourselves: there is great merit here in the "duty of staying at home"! And, on the whole, to say truth, I never heard of "worlds" being "saved" in any other way. That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. Let us not follow it too far. For the saving of the _world_ I will trust confidently to the Maker of the world; and look a little to my own saving, which I am more competent to!--In brief, for the world"s sake, and for our own, we will rejoice greatly that Scepticism, Insincerity, Mechanical Atheism, with all their poison-dews, are going, and as good as gone.--
Now it was under such conditions, in those times of Johnson, that our Men of Letters had to live. Times in which there was properly no truth in life. Old truths had fallen nigh dumb; the new lay yet hidden, not trying to speak. That Man"s Life here below was a Sincerity and Fact, and would forever continue such, no new intimation, in that dusk of the world, had yet dawned. No intimation; not even any French Revolution,--which we define to be a Truth once more, though a Truth clad in h.e.l.lfire! How different was the Luther"s Pilgrimage, with its a.s.sured goal, from the Johnson"s, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, grown now incredible, unintelligible! Mahomet"s Formulas were of "wood waxed and oiled," and could be _burnt_ out of one"s way: poor Johnson"s were far more difficult to burn.--The strong man will ever find _work_, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure of his strength. But to make-out a victory, in those circ.u.mstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was perhaps more difficult than in any.
Not obstruction, disorganisation, Bookseller Osborne and Fourpence-halfpenny a day; not this alone; but the light of his own soul was taken from him. No landmark on the Earth; and, alas, what is that to having no loadstar in the Heaven! We need not wonder that none of those Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly is the highest praise. With a mournful sympathy we will contemplate, if not three living victorious Heroes, as I said, the Tombs of three fallen Heroes! They fell for us too; making a way for us. There are the mountains which they hurled abroad in their 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. They concern us here as the singular _Prophets_ 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 eminently distinguishes them from the poor artificial ma.s.s of their contemporaries; and renders them worthy to be considered as Speakers, in some measure, of the everlasting truth, as Prophets in that age of theirs. By Nature herself, a n.o.ble necessity was laid on them to be so. They were men of such magnitude that they could not live on unrealities,--clouds, froth and all inanity gave-way under them: there was no footing for them but on firm earth; no rest or regular motion for them, if they got not footing there. To a certain extent, they were Sons of Nature once more in an age of Artifice; once more, Original Men.
As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one of our great English souls. A strong and n.o.ble man; so much left undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not have been,--Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not complain of his "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 better!--Johnson"s youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable. Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favourablest outward circ.u.mstances, Johnson"s life could have been other than a painful one. The world might have had more of profitable _work_ out of him, or less; but his _effort_ against the world"s work could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for his n.o.bleness, had said to him, Live in an element of diseased sorrow.
Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the n.o.bleness 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 Nessus"-shirt not to be stript-off, which is his own natural skin! In this manner _he_ had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of "fourpence-halfpenny a day." Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man"s. One 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 Gentleman Commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts,--pitches them out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of n.o.bleness 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 mud, if you will, but honestly on that;--on the reality and substance which Nature gives _us_, not on the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us!--
And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and self-help was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; only small mean souls are otherwise. I could not find a better proof of what I said the other day, That the sincere man was by nature the obedient man; that only in a World of Heroes was there loyal Obedience to the Heroic. The essence of _originality_ is not that it be _new_: Johnson believed altogether in the old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him; and in a right heroic manner lived under them. He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and facts. He stood by the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that _he_ could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divine-infernal, upon this man too! How he harmonised his Formulas with it, how he managed at all under such circ.u.mstances: that is a thing worth seeing. A thing "to be looked at with reverence, with pity, with awe." That Church of St. Clement Danes, where Johnson still _worshipped_ in the era of Voltaire, is to me a venerable place.
It was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects "artificial"? Artificial things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly _shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, _true_. What we call "Formulas" are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably good.
Formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading towards some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. Consider it.
One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul"s reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a "Path." And now see: the second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the _easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Inst.i.tutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper"s heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they 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-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live--without stealing!
A n.o.ble unconsciousness is in him. He does not "engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;" no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being _in_sincere!
To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; unrecognised, because never questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon: all the Great Men I ever heard-of have this as the primary material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at secondhand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. How shall he stand otherwise? His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the n.o.ble necessity of being true. Johnson"s way of thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet"s was: but I recognise the everlasting element of heart-_sincerity_ in both; and see with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seed-field will _grow_.
Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching. "A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched G.o.d-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: how could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, I call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time.
Johnson"s Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now, as it were, disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson"s opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson"s Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart:--ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are _sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now; sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of it: all this you will put-up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not, has always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with _nothing_ in them;--a man is a _male_factor to the world who writes such! _They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his _Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man. Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural n.o.bleness; it stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.
One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He pa.s.ses for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. Yet the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time, approaching in such awestruck att.i.tude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue in his mean garret there: it is a genuine reverence for Excellence; a _worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem exist always, and a certain worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if so, it is not the Hero"s blame, but the Valet"s: that his soul, namely, is a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a _Grand-Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet.
The Valet does not know a Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of _Hero_ to do that;--and one of the world"s wants, in _this_ as in other senses, is for the most part want of such.
On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell"s admiration was well bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson too, that he guided his difficult confused existence wisely; led it _well_, like a right-valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave all need to have: with his eye set on that, he would change his course for nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. "To the Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in no wise strike his flag." Brave old Samuel: _ultimus Romanorum_!