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Part I
Part I
Sir Walter Scott^1
[Footnote 1: London and Westminster Review, No. 12. - Memoirs of the Life of
Sir Walter Scott, Baronet, Vols. i. - vi., Edinburgh, 1837.]
American Cooper asserts, in one of his books, that there is "an
instinctive tendency in men to look at any man who has become distinguished."
True, surely: as all observation and survey of mankind, from China to Peru,
from Nebuchadnezzar to Old Hickory, will testify! Why do men crowd towards the
improved-drop at Newgate, eager to catch a sight? The man about to be hanged
is in a distinguished situation. Men crowd to such extent, that Greenacre`s is
not the only life choked-out there. Again, ask of these leathern vehicles,
cabriolets, neat-flies, with blue men and women in them, that scour all
thoroughfares, Whither so fast? To see dear Mrs. Rigmarole, the distinguished
female; great Mr. Rigmarole, the distinguished male! Or, consider that
crowning phenomenon, and summary of modern civilisation, a soiree of lions.
Glittering are the rooms, well-lighted, thronged; bright flows their
undulatory flood of blonde-gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling on all
faces; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering distinguished: oracles
of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really pleasant to see; whom it is
worthwhile to go and see: look at them, but inquire not of them, depart rather
and be thankful. For your lion-soiree admits not of speech; there lies the
specialty of it. A meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has
civilisation gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might in some
articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dispensed with in it.
Utterance there is not; nay, there is a certain grinning play of tongue-fence,
and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. For which reason
it has been suggested, with an eye to sincerity and silence in such
lion-soirees, Might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, as wine-decanters
are? Let him carry, slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good,
his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it, with
what farther ocular survey you find useful, and speech is not needed at all.
Of Fenimore Cooper, it is most true there is `an instinctive tendency in men
to look at any man that has become distinguished`; and, moreover, an
instinctive desire in men to become distinguished and be looked at!
For the rest, we will call it a most valuable tendency this;
indispensable to mankind. Without it, where were star-and-garter, and
significance of rank; where were all ambition, money-getting, respectability
of gig or no gig; and, in a word, the main impetus by which society moves, the
main force by which it hangs together? A tendency, we say, of manifold
results; of manifold origin, not ridiculous only, but sublime; - which some
incline to deduce from the mere gregarious purblind nature of man, prompting
him to run, `as dim-eyed animals do, towards any glittering object, were it
but a scoured tankard, and mistake it for a solar luminary,` or even
`sheeplike, to run and crowd because many have already run`! It is indeed
curious to consider how men do make the gods that themselves worship. For the
most famed man, round whom all the world rapturously huzzahs and venerates, as
if his like were not, is the same man whom all the world was wont to jootle
into the kennels; not a changed man, but in every fibre of him the same man.
Foolish world, what went ye out to see? A tankard scoured bright: and do there
not lie, of the self-same pewter, whole barrowfuls of tankards, though by
worse fortune all still in the dim state?
And yet, at bottom, it is not merely our gregarious sheeplike quality,
but something better, and indeed best: which has been called `the perpetual
fact of hero-worship`; our inborn sincere love of great men! Not the gilt
farthing, for its own sake, do even fools covet; but the gold guinea which
they mistake it for. Veneration of great men is perennial in the nature of
man; this, in all times, especially in these, is one of the blessedest facts
predicable of him. In all times, even in these seemingly so disobedient times,
`it remains a blessed fact, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that
whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Show the dullest clodpole,
show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually
here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship.` So it
has been written; and may be cited and repeated till known to all. Understand
it well, this of `hero-worship` was the primary creed, and has intrinsically
been the secondary and ternary, and will be the ultimate and final creed of
mankind; indestructible, changing in shape, but in essence unchangeable;
whereon polities, religions, loyalties, and all highest human interests have
been and can be built, as on a rock that will endure while man endures. Such
is hero-worship; so much lies in that our inborn sincere love of great men! -
In favour of which unspeakable benefits of the reality, what can we do but
cheerfully pardon the multiplex ineptitudes of the semblance; cheerfully wish
even lion-soirees, with labels for their lions or without that improvement,
all manner of prosperity? Let hero-worship flourish, say we; and the more and
more assiduous chase after gilt farthings while guineas are not yet
forthcoming. Herein, at lowest, is proof that guineas exist, that they are
believed to exist, and valued. Find great men, if you can; if you cannot,
still quit not the search; in defect of great men, let there be noted men, in
such number, to such degree of intensity as the public appetite can tolerate.
Whether Sir Walter Scott was a great man, is still a question with some;
but there can be no question with any one that he was a most noted and even
notable man. In this generation there was no literary man with such a
popularity in any country; there have only been a few with such, taking-in all
generations and all countries. Nay, it is farther to be admitted that Sir
Walter Scott`s popularity was of a select sort rather; not a popularity of the
populace. His admirers were at one time almost all the intelligent of
civilised countries; and to the last included, and do still include, a great
portion of that sort. Such fortune he had, and has continued to maintain for a
space of some twenty or thirty years. So long the observed of all observers: a
great man or only a considerable man; here surely, if ever, is a singular
circumstanced, is a `distinguished` man! In regard to whom, therefore, the
`instinctive tendency` on other men`s part cannot be wanting. Let men look,
where the world has already so long looked. And now, while the new, earnestly
expected Life `by his son-in-law and literary executor` again summons the
whole world`s attention round him, probably for the last time it will ever
be so summoned; and men are in some sort taking leave of a notability, and
about to go their way, and commit him to his fortune on the flood of
things, - why should not this Periodical Publication likewise publish its
thought about him? Readers of miscellaneous aspect, of unknown quantity and
quality, are waiting to hear it done. With small inward vocation, but
cheerfully obedient to destiny and necessity, the present reviewer will follow
a multitude: to do evil or tw do no evil, will depend not on the multitude but
on himself. One thing he did decidedly wish; at least to wait till the Work
were finished: for the six promised Volumes, as the world knows, have flowed
over into a Seventh, which will not for some weeks yet see the light. But the
editorial powers, wearied with waiting, have become peremptory; and declare
that, finished or not finished, they will have their hands washed of it at
this opening of the year. Perhaps it is best. The physiognomy of Scott will
not be much altered for us by that Seventh Volume; the prior Six have altered
it but little; - as, indeed, a man who has written some two hundred volumes of
his own, and lived for thirty years amid the universal speech of friends, must
have already left some likeness of himself. Be it as the peremptory editorial
powers require.
First, therefore, a word on the Life itself. Mr. Lockhart`s known powers
justify strict requisition in his case. Our verdict in general would be, that
he has accomplished the work he schemed for himself in a creditable
workmanlike manner. It is true, his notion of what the work was, does not seem
to have been very elevated. To picture-forth the life of Scott according to
any rules of art or composition, so that a reader, on adequately examining it,
might say to himself, "There is Scott, there is the physiognomy and meaning of
Scott`s appearance and transit on this earth; such was he by nature, so did
the world act on him, so he on the world, with such result and significance
for himself and us": this was by no manner of means Mr. Lockhart`s plan. A
plan which, it is rashly said, should preside over every biography! It might
have been fulfilled with all degrees of perfection, from that of the Odyssey
down to Thomas Ellwood or lower. For there is no heroic poem in the world but
is at bottom a biography, the life of a man: also, it may be said, there is
no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort,
rhymed or unrhymed. It is a plan one would prefer, did it otherwise suit;
which it does not, in these days. Seven volumes sell so much dearer than one;
are so much easier to write than one. The Odyssey, for instance, what were
the value of the Odyssey sold per sheet? One paper of Pickwick; or say, the
inconsiderable fraction of one. This, in commercial algebra, were the
equation: Odyssey equal to Pickwick divided by an unknown integer.
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature, that of paying
literary men by the quantity they do not write. Nay, in sober truth, is not
this actually the rule in all writing; and, moreover, in all conduct and
acting? Not what stands above ground, but what lies unseen under it, as the
root and subterrene element it sprang from and emblemed forth, determines the
value. Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is
better. Silence is deep as Eternity: speech is shallow as Time. Paradoxical
does it seem? Woe for the age, woe for the man, quack-ridden, bespeeched,
bespouted, blown about like barren Sahara, to whom this world-old truth were
altogether strange! - Such we say is the rule, acted on or not, recognised or
not; and he who departs from it, what can he do but spread himself into
breadth and length, into superficiality and saleability; and, except as
filigree, become comparatively useless? One thinks, Had but the hogshead of
thin wash, which sours in a week ready for the kennels, been distilled, been
concentrated! Our dear Fenimore Cooper, whom we started with, might, in that
way, have given us one Natty Leatherstocking, one melodious synopsis of Man
and Nature in the West (for it lay in him to do it), almost as a Saint-Pierre
did for the Islands of the East; and the hundred Incoherences, cobbled hastily
together by order of Colburn and Company, had slumbered in Chaos, as all
incoherences ought if possible to do. Verily this same genius of
diffuse-writing, of diffuse-acting, is a Moloch; and souls pass through the
fire to him, more than enough. Surely, if ever discovery was valuable and
needful, it were that above indicated, of paying by the work not visibly done!
Which needful discovery we will give the whole projecting, railwaying,
knowledge-diffusing, march-of-intellect and otherwise promotive and locomotive
societies in the Old and New World, any required length of centuries to make.
Once made, such discovery once made, we too will fling cap into the air, and
shout, "Io Paean! the Devil is conquered"; - and, in the mean while, study to
think it nothing miraculous that seven biographical volumes are given where
one had been better; and that several other things happen, very much as they
from of old were known to do, and are like to continue doing.
Mr. Lockhart`s aim, we take it, was not that of producing any such
highflown work of art as we hint at: or indeed to do much other than to
print, intelligently bound together by order of time, and by some requisite
intercalary exposition, all such letters, documents and notices about Scott as
he found lying suitable, and as it seemed likely the world would undertake to
read. His Work, accordingly, is not so much a composition, as what we may call
a compilation well done. Neither is this a task of no difficulty; this too is
a task that may be performed with extremely various degrees of talent: from
the Life and Correspondence of Hannah More, for instance, up to this Life of
Scott, there is a wide range indeed! Let us take the Seven Volumes, and be
thankful that they are genuine in their kind. Nay, as to that of their being
seven and not one, it is right to say that the public so required it. To have
done other, would have shown little policy in an author. Had Mr. Lockhart
laboriously compressed himself, and instead of well-done compilation, brought
out the well-done composition, in one volume instead of seven, which not many
men in England are better qualified to do, there can be no doubt but his
readers for the time had been immeasurably fewer. If the praise of magnanimity
be denied him, that of prudence must be conceded, which perhaps he values
more.
The truth is, the work, done in this manner too, was good to have:
Scott`s Biography, if uncomposed, lies printed and indestructible here, in the
elementary state, and can at any time be composed, if necessary, by whosoever
has a call to that. As it is, as it was meant to be, we repeat, the work is
vigorously done. Sagacity, decision, candour, diligence, good manners, good
sense: these qualities are throughout observable. The dates, calculations,
statements, we suppose to be all accurate; much laborious inquiry, some of it
impossible for another man, has been gone into, the results of which are
imparted with due brevity. Scott`s letters, not interesting generally, yet
never absolutely without interest, are copiously given; copiously, but with
selection; the answers to them still more select. Narrative, delineation, and
at length personal reminiscences, occasionally of much merit, of a certain
rough force, sincerity and picturesqueness, duly intervene. The scattered
members of Scott`s Life do lie here, and could be disentangled. In a word,
this compilation is the work of a manful, clear-seeing, conclusive man, and
has been executed with the faculty and combination of faculties the public
had a right to expect from the name attached to it.
One thing we hear greatly blamed in Mr. Lockhart: that he has been too
communicative, indiscreet, and has recorded much that ought to have lain
suppressed. Persons are mentioned, and circumstances, not always of an
ornamental sort. It would appear there is far less reticence than was looked
for! Various persons, name and surname, have `received pain`: nay, the very
Hero of the Biography is rendered unheroic; unornamental facts of him, and of
those he had to do with, being set forth in plain English: hence
`personality,` `indiscretion,` or worse, `sanctities of private life,` etc.,
etc. How delicate, decent is English Biography, bless its mealy mouth! A
Damocles` sword of Respectability hangs forever over the poor English
Life-writer (as it does over poor English Life in general), and reduces him
to the verge of paralysis. Thus it has been said `there are no English lives
worth reading except those of Players, who by the nature of the case have
bidden Respectability good-day.` The English biographer has long felt that if
in writing his Man`s Biography, he wrote down anything that could by
possibility offend any man, he had written wrong. The plain consequence was,
that, properly speaking, no biography whatever could be produced. The poor
biographer, having the fear not of God before his eyes, was obliged to retire
as it were into vacuum; and write in the most melancholy, straitened manner,
with only vacuum for a result. Vain that he wrote, and that we kept reading
volume on volume: there was no biography, but some vague ghost of a biography,
white, stainless; without feature or substance; vacuum, as we say, and wind
and shadow, - which indeed the material of it was.
No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to
elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence. His life is a
battle, in so far as it is an entity at all. The very oyster, we suppose,
comes in collision with oysters: undoubtedly enough it does come in collision
with Necessity and Difficulty; and helps itself through, not as a perfect
ideal oyster, but as an imperfect real one. Some kind of remorse must be known
to the oyster; certain hatreds, certain pusillanimities. But as for man, his
conflict is continual with the spirit of contradiction, that is without and
within; with the evil spirit (or call it, with the weak, most necessitous,
pitiable spirit), that is in others and in himself. His walk, like all walking
(say the mechanicians), is a series of falls. To paint man`s life is to
represent these things. Let them be represented, fitly, with dignity and
measure; but above all, let them be represented. No tragedy of Hamlet with the
part of Hamlet omitted by particular desire! No ghost of a biography, let the
Damocles` sword of Respectability (which, after all, is but a pasteboard one)
threaten as it will. One hopes that the public taste is much mended in this
matter; that vacuum-biographies, with a good many other vacuities related to
them, are withdrawn or withdrawing into vacuum. Probably it was Mr. Lockhart`s
feeling of what the great public would approve, that led him, open-eyed, into
this offence against the small criticising public: we joyfully accept the
omen.
Perhaps then, of all the praises copiously bestowed on his Work, there is
none in reality so creditable to him as this same censure, which has also been
pretty copious. It is a censure better than a good many praises. He is found
guilty of having said this and that, calculated not to be entirely pleasant
to this man and that; in other words, calculated to give him and the thing he
worked in a living set of features, not leave him vague, in the white
beatified-ghost condition. Several men, as we hear, cry out, "See, there is
something written not entirely pleasant to me!" Good friend, it is pity; but
who can help it? They that will crowd about bonfires may, sometimes very
fairly, get their beards singed; it is the price they pay for such
illumination; natural twilight is safe and free to all. For our part, we hope
all manner of biographies that are written in England will henceforth be
written so. If it is that they be written otherwise, then it is still fitter
that they be not written at all: to produce not things but ghosts of things
can never be the duty of man.
The biographer has this problem set before him: to delineate a likeness
of the earthly pilgrimage of a man. He will compute well what profit is in it,
and what disprofit; under which latter head this of offending any of his
fellow-creatures will surely not be forgotten. Nay, this may so swell the
disprofit side of his account, that many an enterprise of biography, otherwise
promising, shall require to be renounced. But once taken up, the rule before
all rules is to do it, not to do the ghost of it. In speaking of the man and
men he has to deal with, he will of course keep all his charities about him;
but all his eyes open. Far be it from him to set down aught untrue; nay, not
to abstain from, and leave in oblivion much that is true. But having found a
thing or things essential for his subject, and well computed the for and
against, he will in very deed set down such thing or things, nothing doubting,
having, we may say, the fear of God before his eyes, and no other fear
whatever. Censure the biographer`s prudence; dissent from the computation he
made, or agree with it; be all malice of his, be all falsehood, nay, be all
offensive avoidable inaccuracy, condemned and consumed; but know that by this
plan only, executed as was possible, could the biographer hope to make a
biography; and blame him not that he did what it had been the worst fault not
to do.
As to the accuracy or error of these statements about the Ballantynes
and other persons aggrieved, which are questions much mooted at present in
some places, we know nothing at all. If they are inaccurate, let them be
corrected; if the inaccuracy was avoidable, let the author bear rebuke and
punishment for it. We can only say, these things carry no look of inaccuracy
on the face of them; neither is anywhere the smallest trace of ill-will or
unjust feeling discernible. Decidedly the probabilities are, and till better
evidence arise, the fair conclusion is, that this matter stands very much as
it ought to do. Let the clatter of censure, therefore, propagate itself as
far as it can. For Mr. Lockhart it virtually amounts to this very
considerable praise, that, standing full in the face of the public, he has
set at naught, and been among the first to do it, a public piece of cant; one
of the commonest we have, and closely allied to many others of the fellest
sort, as smooth as it looks.
The other censure, of Scott being made unheroic, springs from the same
stem; and is, perhaps, a still more wonderful flower of it. Your true hero
must have no features, but be white, stainless, an impersonal ghost-hero! But
connected with this, there is a hypothesis now current, due probably to some
man of name, for its own force would not carry it far: That Mr. Lockhart at
heart has a dislike to Scott, and has done his best in an underhand
treacherous manner to dishero him! Such hypothesis is actually current: he
that has ears may hear it now and then. On which astonishing hypothesis, if a
word must be said, it can only be an apology for silence, - "That there are
things at which one stands struck silent, as at first sight of the Infinite."
For if Mr. Lockhart is fairly chargeable with any radical defect, if on any
side his insight entirely fails him, it seems even to be in this: that Scott
is altogether lovely to him; that Scott`s greatness spreads out for him on
all hands beyond reach of eye; that his very faults become beautiful, his
vulgar worldlinesses are solid prudences, proprieties; and of his worth
there is no measure. Does not the patient Biographer dwell on his Abbots,
Pirates, and hasty theatrical scene-paintings; affectionately analysing them,
as if they were Raphael-pictures, time-defying Hamlets, Othellos? The
Novel-manufactory, with its 15,000l. a-year, is sacred to him as creation of
a genius, which carries the noble victor up to Heaven. Scott is to Lockhart
the unparalleled of the time; an object spreading-out before him like a sea
without shore. Of that astonishing hypothesis, let expressive silence be the
only answer.
And so in sum, with regard to Lockhart`s Life of Scott, readers that
believe in us shall read it with the feeling that a man of talent, decision
and insight wrote it; wrote it in seven volumes, not in one, because the
public would pay for it better in that state; but wrote it with courage, with
frankness, sincerity; on the whole, in a very readable, recommendable manner,
as things go. Whosoever needs it can purchase it, or purchase the loan of it,
with assurance more than usual that he has ware for his money. And now enough
of the written Life; we will glance a little at the man and his acted life.
Into the question whether Scott was a great man or not, we do not propose
to enter deeply. It is, as too usual, a question about words. There can be no
doubt but many men have been named and printed great who were vastly smaller
than he: as little doubt moreover that of the specially good, a very large
portion, according to any genuine standard of man`s worth, were worthless in
comparison to him. He for whom Scott is great may most innocently name him so;
may with advantage admire his great qualities, and ought with sincere heart to
emulate them. At the same time, it is good that there be a certain degree of
precision in our epithets. It is good to understand, for one thing, that no
popularity, and open-mouthed wonder of all the world, continued even for a
long series of years, can make a man great. Such popularity is a remarkable
fortune; indicates a great adaptation of the man to his element of
circumstances; but may or may not indicate anything great in the man. To our
imagination, as above hinted, there is a certain apotheosis in it; but in the
reality no apotheosis at all. Popularity is as a blaze of illumination, or
alas, of conflagration, kindled round a man; showing what is in him; not
putting the smallest item more into him; often abstracting much from him;
conflagrating the poor man himself into ashes and caput mortuum! And then, by
the nature of it, such popularity is transient; your `series of years,` quite
unexpectedly, sometimes almost all on a sudden, terminates! For the stupidity
of men, especially of men congregated in masses round any object, is extreme.
What illuminations and conflagrations have kindled themselves, as if new
heavenly suns had risen, which proved only to be tar-barrels and terrestrial
locks of straw! Profane Princesses cried out, "One God, one Farinelli!" - and
whither now have they and Farinelli danced?
In Literature too there have been seen popularities greater even than
Scott`s, and nothing perennial in the interior of them. Lope de Vega, whom all
the world swore by, and made a proverb of; who could make an acceptable
five-act tragedy in almost as many hours; the greatest of all popularities
past or present, and perhaps one of the greatest men that ever ranked among
popularities. Lope himself, so radiant, far-shining, has not proved to be a
sun or star of the firmament; but is as good as lost and gone out; or plays at
best in the eyes of some few as a vague aurora-borealis, and brilliant
ineffectuality. The great man of Spain sat obscure at the time, all dark and
poor, a maimed soldier; writing his Don Quixote in prison. And Lope`s fate
withal was sad, his popularity perhaps a curse to him; for in this man there
was something ethereal too, a divine particle traceable in few other popular
men; and such far-shining diffusion of himself, though all the world swore by
it, would do nothing for the true life of him even while he lived: he had to
creep into a convent, into a monk`s cowl, and learn, with infinite sorrow,
that his blessedness had lain elsewhere; that when a man`s life feels itself
to be sick and an error, no voting of bystanders can make it well and a truth
again.
Or coming down to our own times, was not August Kotzebue popular?
Kotzebue, not so many years since, saw himself, if rumour and hand-clapping
could be credited, the greatest man going; saw visibly his Thoughts,
dressed-out in plush and pasteboard, permeating and perambulating civilised
Europe; the most iron visages weeping with him, in all theatres from Cadiz to
Kamtchatka; his own `astonishing genius` meanwhile producing two tragedies or
so per month: he, on the whole, blazed high enough: he too has gone out into
Night and Orcus, and already is not. We will omit this of popularity
altogether; and account it as making simply nothing towards Scott`s greatness
or non-greatness, as an accident, not a quality.
Shorn of this falsifying nimbus, and reduced to his own natural
dimensions, there remains the reality, Walter Scott, and what we can find in
him: to be accounted great, or not great, according to the dialects of men.
Friends to precision of epithet will probably deny his title to the name
`great.` It seems to us there goes other stuff to the making of great men
than can be detected here. One knows not what idea worthy of the name of
great what purpose, instinct or tendency, that could be called great, Scott
ever was inspired with His life was worldly; his ambitions were worldly.
There is nothing spiritual in him; all is economical, material, of the
earth earthy. A love of picturesque, of beautiful, vigorous and graceful
things; a genuine love, yet not more genuine than has dwelt in hundreds of men
named minor poets: this is the highest quality to be discerned in him.
His power of representing these things, too, his poetic power, like his
moral power, was a genius in extenso, as we may say, not in intenso. In
action, in speculation, broad as he was, he rose nowhere high; productive
without measure as to quantity, in quality he for the most part transcended
but a little way the region of commonplace. It has been said, `no man has
written as many volumes with so few sentences that can be quoted.` Winged
words were not his vocation; nothing urged him that way: the great Mystery of
Existence was not great to him; did not drive him into rocky solitudes to
wrestle with it for an answer, to be answered or to perish. He had nothing of
the martyr; into no `dark region to slay monsters for us,` did he, either led
or driven, venture down: his conquests were for his own behoof mainly,
conquests over common market-labour, and reckonable in good metallic coin of
the realm. The thing he had faith in, except power, power of what sort soever,
and even of the rudest sort, would be difficult to point out. One sees not
that he believed in anything; nay, he did not even disbelieve; but quietly
acquiesced, and made himself at home in a world of conventionalities; the
false, the semi-false and the true were alike true in this, that they were
there, and had power in their hands more or less. It was well to feel so; and
yet not well! We find it written, `Woe to them that are at ease in Zion`; but
surely it is a double woe to them that are at ease in Babel, in Domdaniel. On
the other hand, he wrote many volumes, amusing many thousands of men. Shall
we call this great? It seems to us there dwells and struggles another sort of
spirit in the inward parts of great men!
Brother Ringletub, the missionary, inquired of Ram-Dass, a Hindoo
man-god, who had set up for godhood lately, What he meant to do, then, with
the sins of mankind? To which Ram-Dass at once answered, He had fire enough in
his belly to burn-up all the sins in the world. Ram-Dass was right so far, and
had a spice of sense in him; for surely it is the test of every divine man
this same, and without it he is not divine or great, - that he have fire in
him to burn-up somewhat of the sins of the world, of the miseries and errors
of the world: why else is he there? Far be it from us to say that a great man
must needs, with benevolence prepense, become a `friend of humanity`; nay,
that such professional self-conscious friends of humanity are not the fatalest
kind of persons to be met with in our day. All greatness is unconscious, or it
is little and nought. And yet a great man without such fire in him, burning
dim or developed, as a divine behest in his heart of hearts, never resting
till it be fulfilled, were a solecism in Nature. A great man is ever, as the
Transcendentalists speak, possessed with an idea.
Napoleon himself, not the superfinest of great men, and ballasted
sufficiently with prudences and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is clear enough,
an idea to start with: the idea that Democracy was the Cause of Man, the right
and infinite Cause. Accordingly he made himself `the armed Soldier of
Democracy`; and did vindicate it in a rather great manner. Nay, to the very
last, he had a kind of idea; that, namely, of `La carriere ouverte aux talens,
The tools to him that can handle them`; really one of the best ideas yet
promulgated on that matter, or rather the one true central idea, towards which
all the others, if they tend anywhither, must tend. Unhappily it was in the
military province only that Napoleon could realise this idea of his, being
forced to fight for himself the while: before he got it tried to any extent in
the civil province of things, his head by much victory grew light (no head can
stand more than its quantity); and he lost head, as they say, and became a
selfish ambitionist and quack, and was hurled out; leaving his idea to be
realised; in the civil province of things, by others! Thus was Napoleon; thus
are all great men: children of the idea; or, in Ram-Dass` phraseology,
furnished with fire to burn-up the miseries of men. Conscious or unconscious,
latent or unfolded, there is small vestige of any such fire being extant in
the inner-man of Scott.
Yet on the other hand, the surliest critic must allow that Scott was a
genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fantasticality or
distortion dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay, withal, was he not a right
brave and strong man, according to his kind? What a load of toil, what a
measure of felicity, he quietly bore along with him; with what quiet strength
he both worked on this earth, and enjoyed in it; invincible to evil fortune
and to good! A most composed, invincible man; in difficulty and distress
knowing no discouragement, Samson-like carrying off on his strong
Samson-shoulders the gates that would imprison him: in danger and menace
laughing at the whisper of fear. And then, with such a sunny current of true
humour and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire
he had all lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful
internal warmth of life; a most robust, healthy man! The truth is, our best
definition of Scott were perhaps even this, that he was, if no great man,
then something much pleasanter to be, a robust, thoroughly healthy and withal
very prosperous and victorious man. An eminently well-conditioned man, healthy
in body, healthy in soul; we will call him one of the healthiest of men.
Neither is this a small matter: health is a great matter, both to the
possessor of it and to others. On the whole, that humorist in the Moral Essay
was not so far out, who determined on honouring health only; and so instead of
humbling himself to the high-born, to the rich and well-dressed, insisted on
doffing hat to the healthy: coroneted carriages with pale faces in them passed
by as failures, miserable and lamentable; trucks with ruddy-cheeked strength
dragging at them were greeted as successful and venerable. For does not health
mean harmony, the synonym of all that is true, justly-ordered, good; is it
not, in some sense, the net-total, as shown by experiment, of whatever worth
is in us? The healthy man is the most meritorious product of Nature so far as
he goes. A healthy body is good; but a soul in right health, - it is the thing
beyond all others to be prayed for; the blessedest thing this earth receives
of Heaven. Without artificial medicament of philosophy, or tight-lacing of
creeds (always very questionable), the healthy soul discerns what is good, and
adheres to it, and retains it; discerns what is bad, and spontaneously casts
it off. An instinct from Nature herself, like that which guides the wild
animals of the forest to their food, shows him what he shall do, what he shall
abstain from. The false and foreign will not adhere to him; cant and all
fantastic diseased incrustations are impossible; - as Walker the Original, in
such eminence of health was he for his part, could not, by much abstinence
from soap-and-water, attain to a dirty face! This thing thou canst work with
and profit by, this thing is substantial and worthy; that other thing thou
canst not work with, it is trivial and inapt: so speaks unerringly the inward
monition of the man`s whole nature. No need of logic to prove the most
argumentative absurdity absurd; as Goethe says of himself, `all this ran down
from me like water from a man in wax-cloth dress.` Blessed is the healthy
nature; it is the coherent, sweetly cooperative, not incoherent,
self-distracting, self-destructive one! In the harmonious adjustment and play
of all the faculties, the just balance of oneself gives a just feeling towards
all men and all things. Glad light from within radiates outwards,
and enlightens and embellishes.
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