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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
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 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/onheroesheroworscarl 
 
THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 From the portrait by J. A. McNeill Whistler 
 
a^lie UitJcriStDe iLicerature Series; '«-,-, 
 
 \^^1 
 
 ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, 
 
 AND 
 
 THE HEROIC IN HISTORY 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 EDITED FOR STUDY 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN CHESTER ADAMS, Ph. D. 
 
 INSTEUCTOB IN ENGLISH IN YAXK UNIVEBSITY 
 
 c 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 THEUWVERSm' OF NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 Boston : 4 Park Street ; New York : 85 Fifth Avenae 
 Chicago: 378-388 Wabash Avenue 
 
 d)E fiiUEcjJiiJE prEjSjj Cambridge 
 
COFTIUGHT I9C7 BY HOUGHTON", MIFFLIN AXD COMPANT 
 M.l. RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
PREFATORY XOTE 
 
 This edition of " Heroes and Hero-Worship " is in- 
 tended for the beginner, not the experienced Carlylean. 
 It is important, therefore, that he should have all the 
 time available to study Carlyle's thought and style, 
 and be relieved of the need of hunting over diction- 
 aries and encyclopedias for mere information. An at- 
 tempt has been m^ade in the footnotes to supply such 
 mechanical apparatus as would be useful to a student 
 of the last years in the High School or of Freshman 
 or Sophomore year in college in gaining a verbal 
 understanding of the text. The " Additional Xotes " 
 contain suggestions for his more deliberate and care- 
 ful study of Carlyle's teaching. The editor has not 
 felt any obligation to stand over the author with a rod 
 of correction for the occasional petty slips of his mem- 
 ory or the imperfect scholarship of his generation ; 
 for the value of the book consists primarily in its 
 power to stimulate mind and heart and soul, rather 
 than in the amount of historical or other knowledge 
 that one may gather from it. 
 
 The text is that of the Library Edition of Carlyle's 
 works, London, 1869-71, of which the People's Edi- 
 tion, the only later one issued during Carlyle's life, 
 was a cheap reprint. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Prefatory Note iii 
 
 Introduction 
 
 I. Lif e of Carlyle vii 
 
 II. The Four Courses of Lectures and the Publication of 
 
 Heroes and Hero-Worship xxi 
 
 III. Carlyle's Style in Heroes and Hero-Worship . . . xxviii 
 
 IV. Carlyle's Teachings in Heroes and Hero-Worship . . xxxii 
 Heroes and Hero-Worship 
 
 Lecture I. The Hero as Divinity. Odin. Paganism : 
 
 Scandinavian Mythology 1 
 
 Lecture II. The Hero as Prophet. Mahomet : Islam . 58 
 
 Lecture III. The Hero as Poet. Dante ; Shakspeare . 107 
 Lecture IV. The Hero as Priest. Luther ; Reformation : 
 
 Knox ; Puritanism 162 
 
 Lecture V. The Hero as Man of Letters. Johnson, Rous- 
 seau, Bums 215 
 
 Lecture VI. The Hero as King. Cromwell, Napoleon : 
 
 Modern Revolutionism 272 
 
 Carlyle's Summary 339 
 
 Additional Notes, Comments, and Suggestions for Study 349 
 
 Bibliography for Outside Reading 367 
 
 Suggestions for Teaching 369 
 
 Carlyle's Index 373 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Thomas Carlyle Frontispiece 
 
 From the portrait by J. A. McNeill Whistler 
 
 Dante Alighieri 118 
 
 Tlie Bargello Portrait, drawn by Mr. Seymour Kirhip before it was 
 retouched by Marini 
 
 Samuel Johnson 248 
 
 From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 
 Oliver Cromwell 334 
 
 From the painting by Robert Walker, in the Collection of the Earl of 
 Sandwich, Hinchingbrooke, England. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 LIFE OF CARLTLE 
 
 In a small country village in southwestern Scotland, 
 toward the latter part of the eighteenth century, there 
 grew up five brothers, who by their character and occu- 
 pation earned the title of the " five fighting masons," 
 — "a curious sample o' folks, pithy, bitter-speaking 
 bodies, and awful fighters." The second of these con- 
 cerns us here, James Carlyle, a steady, abstemious, 
 self-reliant, hard-working, thorough-working, devout- 
 minded man, living in a house built by his own hands. 
 A stone bridge of his building was regarded with 
 pride by his famous son as a more honorable work 
 than any of his own books. When James Carlyle 
 died in 1832, his son Thomas, unable to return home 
 to see his burial, found consolation in writing down 
 " Reminiscences " of him : " In several respects I con- 
 sider my father as one of the most interesting men I 
 have known, ... of perhaps the very largest natural 
 endowment of any it has been my lot to converse with. 
 None of you will ever forget that bold glowing style of 
 his, flowing free from his untutored soul, full of meta- 
 phors (though he knew not what a metaphor was), 
 with all manner of potent words. Nothing did I ever 
 hear him imdertake to render visible which did not 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 become almost ocularly so. Emphatic I have heard 
 him beyond all men. . . . His words were like sharp 
 arrows that smote into the very heart. . . . Let me 
 write my books as he built his houses, and walk as 
 blamelessly through this shadow world. . . . We all 
 had to complain that we durst not freely love him. . . . 
 TiU late years I was ever more or less awed and chilled 
 by him." 
 
 His wife was of a more tender, approachable nature. 
 She it was that taught Tom at an early age to read, 
 though her own equipment did not enable her to go 
 far with him. When he grew up she learned to write 
 that she might keep better in touch with him in his 
 absence. To her in later years he wrote constantly of 
 his doings and thinkings. She encouraged him by her 
 confidence in his powers, and studied his books with 
 loving pride in his accomplishment. And as long as 
 she lived it was one of his chiefest joys to return from 
 the society of the distinguished literary world to the 
 talk of her " with whom alone my heart played fi'eely," 
 as they smoked their pipes together by the hearth 
 in simple peasant fashion. 
 
 Of James Carlyle and Margaret Aitken, his wife, 
 Thomas was the eldest child, born December 4, 1795, 
 in the village of Ecclefechan in Dumfriessliire. His 
 education began early in the home. To the reading 
 taught him by his mother, the father added a scanty 
 supply of arithmetic. At the age of five he began to 
 attend school. At seven he was pronounced " com- 
 plete in English," — in some ways almost a foreign 
 tongue to the Annandale peasant boy. Two years 
 later he added further to his knowledge, if not to his 
 
LIFE OF CARLYLE ix 
 
 happiness, by being sent to the Annan Grammar 
 School six miles away, to be prepared for the Univer- 
 sity. How Carlyle fared there is reflected in " Sartor 
 Resartus" ^ in the account of Teufelsdrockh's experi- 
 ences at the Hinterschlag Gymnasium : " My Teachers 
 were hide-bound Pedants, without knowledge of man's 
 nature, or of boy's ; or of aught save their lexicons 
 and quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead Voca- 
 bles (no dead Language, for they themselves knew 
 no Language) they crammed into us, and called it 
 fostering the growth of mind. . . . The Professors knew 
 syntax enough ; and of the human soul thus much : 
 that it had a faculty called Memory, and could be 
 aeted-on through the muscular integument by the ap- 
 pliance of birch-rods." 
 
 In November, 1809, Carlyle walked the eighty and 
 odd miles across the country to Edinburgh University. 
 His career there was not distinguished, except perhaps 
 inwardly, by a more than usually strenuous confhct 
 of irrepressible personality with institutional conven- 
 tions. " Had you, anywhere in Grim Tartary," says 
 Teufelsdrockh,2 " walled-in a square enclosure ; fur- 
 nished it with a small, ill- chosen Library ; and then 
 turned loose into it eleven-hundred Christian striplings, 
 to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven 
 years : certain persons, under the title of Professors, 
 being stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it 
 was a University, and exact considerable admission- 
 fees, — you had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet 
 in spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance of 
 our High Seminary." " What I have found the Uni- 
 » II, ui. 2 Ibid. 
 
X- INTRODUCTION 
 
 versity did for me, was that it taught me to read in 
 various languages and various sciences, so that I could 
 go into the books that treated of these things, and try 
 anything I wanted to make myself master of gradually, 
 as I found it suit me." ^ He was more than ordinarily 
 proficient in mathematics, but the University gave 
 him little Latin and less Greek. For two years after 
 his departure (in 1814), without a degree, he was 
 mathematical tutor at Annan, and the following two 
 years at Kirkcaldy. The teaching had been under- 
 taken as a temporary means of support until he 
 should be ready for ordination as a minister of the 
 Kirk of Scotland, the goal of his parents' ambition 
 for him. But theological uncertainties caused him to 
 feel the impossibility of ever preaching from a pulpit, 
 — though preacher he was to the end of his days. 
 The change was a bitter disappointment to his father 
 and mother and a bitter grief to himseK for their 
 sakes. 
 
 Convinced that " it were better to perish than to 
 continue school-mastering," in 1818 he returned to Ed- 
 inburgh to attend law lectures. The law soon showed 
 itself no more satisfactory than other professions ; and 
 while he supported himself by teaching private pupils 
 and writing articles, distinguished by no trace of indi- 
 viduality of thought or style, for the " Edinburgh Ency- 
 clopedia," he dragged through the three most wretched 
 years of his life. His frugal and irregular living in 
 university days, in an attempt to spare as much as pos- 
 sible the family supply of oatmeal, had rendered him 
 a victim to unutterable torments of dyspepsia: "A 
 ^ Inaugural Address, On the Choice of Books. 
 
LIFE OF CARLYLE xi 
 
 rat was gnawing at the pit of my stomach." To this 
 continual agony was added " eating of the heart, mis- 
 givings as to whether there shall be presently anything 
 else to eat, disappointment of the nearest and dear- 
 est as to the hoped-for entrance on the ministry, and 
 steadily-growing disappointment of self — above all, 
 wanderings through mazes of doubt, perpetual question- 
 ings unanswered." A pretty complete list of woes! 
 Carlyle had been brought up in the strict Scotch Cal- 
 vinistic faith and practice : the pi-actice he held to al- 
 ways, the faith was struggling for existence. His wide 
 reading and thinking had opened to him visions of 
 truth far wider than were possible to the Ecclefechan 
 stone-mason and his wife. He felt himself drifting 
 toward materialism, — a belief, or " no-belief," which 
 he had been taught to consider tenable only by one 
 possessed of the Devil, and of which he continued to 
 the end to hold essentially the same opinion. It was 
 the eompletest upheaval of his inmost nature, and he 
 suffered as a man suffers only when the deepest feel- 
 ings of his heart are torn up by the roots. How, in 
 June, 1821, he won the decisive battle of the campaign 
 against the " Everlasting No " is told in the chapter 
 so entitled in " Sartor Resartus." His great helper in the 
 struggle was Goethe, to whom he wrote, " It can never 
 be forgotten that to you I owe the all-precious know- 
 ledge and experience that Reverence is still possible : 
 that instead of conjecturing and denying, I can again 
 believe and know." Financial aid came to him succes- 
 sively by his appointment as a tutor in a wealthy fam- 
 ily, and by the success of his " Life of SchiUer " and his 
 translation of " Wilhelm Meister ; " but the dyspepsia 
 
xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 clung closer than a brother for the rest of his life, 
 though relenting a little after his eightieth year. 
 
 In June, 1821, Carlyle had met Miss Jane Baillie 
 Welsh (born 1801). Her father was a successful phy- 
 sician of the town of Haddington. He alone, and not 
 always he, could control the merry, mocking, keen- 
 witted, and sometimes shar}>tongued maid with raven 
 locks and sparkling black eyes. He died in 1819. 
 Her mother was of the sort excellently qualified for 
 spoiling such a daughter. From the first there was no 
 doubt of Jane Welsh's unusual intellectual gifts. At 
 the age of ten her admiration for the heroes of ancient 
 Rome — she had been reading Vergil — led her to 
 abjure her dolls, which were surrendered to the flames in 
 humble imitation of Dido of Carthage. Her literary 
 tastes and aspirations formed a strong bond of sympathy 
 between her and Carlyle in the beginnings of their 
 acquaintance. In spite of his peasant awkwardness of 
 person and manners her quick penetration discovered 
 the promise of his genius. Their letters were at first 
 of things literary ; then the personal note began to be 
 heard. Their courtship — "a sore fight : but he won it," 
 as Carlyle says of Knox's life — was marked by many 
 advances and retrogressions, declarations and recanta- 
 tions, and has been represented in many different lights. 
 Professor Norton is the present guardian of their let- 
 ters, and has told how they impress him, in the Ap- 
 pendix to his edition of the " Early Letters of Thomas 
 Carlyle," vol. i. They were married in October, 
 1826. 
 
 Carlyle's character as a husband has been one of the 
 battle-grounds of literature. If we were to take at full 
 
LIFE OF CARLYLE xiii 
 
 value everytliing which Mrs. Carlyle said about their 
 married life to her friends, or wrote in her letters and 
 journal, and everything that Carlyle wrote in his grief- 
 stricken, remorseful " Reminiscences " after her death, 
 we could hardly avoid the conclusion that he was a ver- 
 itable ogre, and that she led one of the most wretched 
 lives recorded in books. During most of their married 
 life she suffered from varying degrees of ill health, — 
 sometimes being so unstrung nervously as to be hardly 
 herself, and hardly responsible for her bitter words. 
 Under such conditions trilies easily became tragedies 
 in her judgment, and her husband had too much of 
 the same tendency to be able to restore the balance. 
 At times both seemed, as Hume said of Rousseau, to 
 have been " born without a skin." Carlyle's entire ab- 
 sorption in his work and consequent thoughtless neglect 
 of his wife's comfort when a book was in process of cre- 
 ation, as well as his occasional violent bursts of temper 
 while under the exhausting strain of steady writing, 
 were matters which doubtless every one will agree with 
 Mrs. Carlyle in wishing otherwise. And no doubt one 
 also wishes that her talent for enduring much hardness 
 had been mated with a better talent for consuming 
 her own smoke, and a softer tact in bringing her hus- 
 band's real tenderness to the surface. But after the 
 worst has been told, as it has been most abundantly, it 
 is still visible to the discriminating eye that the love be- 
 tween them was far too deep and strong for any tempo- 
 rary irritations and misunderstandings to extinguish. 
 " Oh ! if I could but see her once more," he wrote, in his 
 lonehness after her death, " were it but for five min- 
 utes, to let her know that I always loved her through 
 
xlv INTRODUCTION 
 
 all that ! She never did know it, never ! " But I be- 
 lieve she did know it, nevertheless. 
 
 After living a year and a half just out of Edinburgh, 
 Carlyle writing for the reviews, they gave up the finan- 
 cial struggle and retired to a farm far out in the coun- 
 try at Craigenputtock, " Hill of Hawks," belonging 
 to the Welshes. It was not an ideal spot for a viva- 
 cious and high-spirited society belle, but Mrs. Carlyle's 
 life was not, as some would persuade us, one of unre- 
 lieved gloom and unthanked drudgery ; her nature had 
 other sides, and she was above all things desirous, now 
 and all her life, with unflinching loyalty, of doing what- 
 ever would promote Carlyle's effectiveness in his literary 
 work. Here, with a brief sojourn in London and another 
 in Edinburgh, he battled on for six years, with Jane 
 Welsh's help, writing numerous miscellaneous essays 
 (including " Burns ") and " Sartor Resartus," — of all 
 his books the most completely expressive of the author, 
 and containing the germ of almost all his later teach- 
 ings. The manuscript of " Sartor " was at first re- 
 fused by all the publishers — by some more abruptly 
 than by others ; it was finally published serially in 
 " Frazer's Magazine," 1833-4, and provoked a storm of 
 ridicide and disgust. Mrs. Carlyle pronounced it " a 
 work of genius, dear ; " but Emerson, in America, and 
 one Father O'Shea, of Cork, seemed to be the only 
 " Public " that essentially disagreed with the reviewer 
 who pronounced it " a heap of clotted nonsense." Not 
 long before Carlyle's death thirty thousand copies of a 
 cheap edition were sold in a few weeks. 
 
 Meanwhile Carlyle, seeing that Craigenputtock was 
 in various respects ill suited to his needs as a literary 
 
LIFE OF CARLYLE XV 
 
 man, determined to burn his ships and seek his for- 
 tune in London. He himself went on ahead to engage 
 a house, and in June, 1834, they settled at No. 5 (now 
 24) Cheyne Row, Chelsea, their home for the rest of 
 their lives. Poverty still dogged his heels. " It is now 
 some three-and-twenty months," he writes, in February, 
 1835, "since I have earned one penny by the craft of 
 literature. ... I have been ready to work, I am abler 
 than ever to work, . . . yet so it stands." By about 
 the end of the month the first volume of the " French 
 Revolution" was finished. It represented five months 
 of the most exacting labor, besides a great deal of 
 earlier reading and thinking. The manuscript, hav- 
 ing been lent to Carlyle's friend MiU, was carelessly 
 exposed to the ravages of a serving-maid, and, " except 
 four or five bits of leaves, irrevocably annihilated." 
 " Well, Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up," were 
 Carlyle's first words to his wife, when Mill left their 
 house after reporting the calamity ; " we must en- 
 deavor to hide from him how very serious this busi- 
 ness is to us." He braced hiinself manfully for the 
 effort of re-writing, and the entire work was published 
 early in 1837, winning immediate and enthusiastic 
 recognition. "Everybody," said Thackeray, who re- 
 viewed it for " The Times," " is astonished at every 
 other body's being pleased with this wonderful per- 
 formance." But Carlyle always felt, contrary to Mrs. 
 Carlyle's opinion, that the re- written first volume was 
 inferior to the original. The same 3^ear saw Carlyle's 
 first appearance on the platform in a successful course 
 of lectures on "German Literature," — followed in 
 successive years by other courses, ending with " Heroes 
 
xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 and Hero-Worsliip," 1840. The lean years were over, 
 and his "place and subsistence" were thenceforth as- 
 sured. 
 
 Carlyle had read much on Cromwell before treating 
 him in " Heroes," and was already hard at work on 
 the book which was to finish the work of vindication 
 begun in the lecture, when he turned aside for a few 
 weeks, in the first months of 1843, to write " Past and 
 Present." "Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches" 
 appeared in 1845, and established a new reputation 
 for Carlyle as an original historian. His deep scorn 
 and distrust of contemporary political and economic 
 methods were expressed in the denunciatory " Latter- 
 Day Pamphlets" of 1850. "^le wrote in his study, 
 alone with his anger, his gi'ief, and his biliousness." 
 But the atmosphere was clear and serene in his " Life 
 of Sterling," 1851. 
 
 The Carlyles entered "the valley of the shadow 
 of Frederick " the next year, Carlyle making a 
 trip to Germany to collect materials, though the 
 fu'st volumes did not appear until 1858. As time 
 went on the book became an increasingly intolerable 
 burden to him : "A task that I cannot do," he wrote 
 to Emerson, " that generally seems to me not worth 
 doing, and yet that must be done. No job apjjroach- 
 ing to it in ugliness was ever cut out for me ; nor had 
 I any motive to go on, except the sad negative one. 
 Shall we be beaten in our old days?" The final vol- 
 umes appeared in 1865. For vivid realistic picturing 
 and story, and for completeness and accuracy of detail, 
 " The History of Frederick II, commonly called the 
 Great " is one of the greatest of historical works. 
 
LIFE OF CARLYLE xvii 
 
 In 1865 the studentsof Edinburgh University elected 
 Carlyle Lord Rector, and the following April he fulfilled 
 the sole duty of that honorary office in the delivery of 
 the most famous of all Lord-Rectorial addresses, '•'• On 
 the Choice of Books." It was heard with tremendous 
 enthusiasm, the students thronging about him at the 
 close with hearts deeply moved. " A perfect triumph," 
 Professor Tjaidall telegraphed to Mrs. Carlyle. Her 
 pride and delight in her husband's success were 
 unbounded. While all the land was still reechoing 
 praise of the address there came to him, in the North, 
 a telegram announcing Mrs. Carlyle's death. She had 
 died suddenly, of heart failure, while riding in Hyde 
 Park. The next day Carlyle received her last letter, 
 full of affectionate anticipation o^ his return. On her 
 tomb at Haddington are inscribed the following words, 
 written by Carlyle : " In her bright existence she had 
 more sorrows than are common, but also a soft invinci- 
 bility, a capacity of discernment, and a noble loyalty 
 of heart that are rare. For forty years she was the 
 true and loving helpmate of her husband, and by act 
 and word unweariedly fowarded him as none else coidd 
 in all of worthy that he did or attempted. She died 
 at London, 21st April, 186iS, suddenly snatched from 
 him, and the light of his life is as if gone out." 
 
 During the remaining years of his life Carlyle pro- 
 duced a few essays, but no gTcat work. His latest 
 writings were dictated, for the palsy of his hand pi-e- 
 vented his writing himself. Honors showered in on 
 him from his own country and from abroad. He was 
 persuaded to accept the Prussian Ordre j^oiir le 
 Merite ; and was offered the Grand Cross of the Bath, 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 which he declined. He died on the 4th of February, 
 1881, and was buried, according to his own request, 
 beside the graves of his own kin in the Ecclefechan 
 kirkyard, though offer was made, as he had foreseen 
 it might be, of a place in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 Carlyle's was far too great and too complex a na- 
 ture to be disposed of in a few paragraphs of an In- 
 troduction, but the main traits were clearly marked. 
 To the reader of " Heroes " one fundamental charac- 
 teristic of its author is evident on every page , — his 
 uncompromising love of truth. Whether or not his 
 judgments in specific cases were right or wrong, it is 
 clear to even the most unsympathetic that they were 
 delivered earnestly by one of the most genuinely sin- 
 cere of men. From the begining to the end he waged 
 ceaseless war with all forms of shams and convention- 
 alities, — " simulacra " and " formulas." His intensity 
 was like that of his Hero-poet, Dante. He demanded 
 of others the same sterling honesty of purpose which 
 was exemplified in himself ; and his indignation, pro- 
 voked by any sort of injustice or hypocrisy, uttered 
 itself in blasting denunciation or ridicule, according 
 to his mood. But in conversation his keen sense of 
 humor often got the better of his indignation, and 
 " he would dissolve his fiercest objurgations and tu- 
 mults of wrath," says Professor Masson, " in some 
 sudden phantasy of the sheerly absurd, and a burst of 
 uproarious laughter." 
 
 " A man who does not know rigor, cannot pity 
 either," writes Carlyle in his characterization of 
 Dante. Of Carlyle's quick sympathy and generosity 
 
LIFE OF CARLYLE xiy 
 
 the stories are innumerable, — toward his family first 
 of all and always, to old friends of Ecclefechan days, 
 to London street beggars, and to charitable and 
 philanthropic causes of all sorts, to which in the later 
 years of jjrosperity he gave bountifully and usually 
 anonymously. " His only expensive luxury was char- 
 ity." " All the bitterness is love with the point re- 
 versed," was Mrs. Browning's interpretation of his 
 occasional seeming harshness. Similar is Harriet 
 Martineau's comment : " His excess of sympathy has 
 been, I believe, the master-pain of his life, . . . and 
 the savageness which has come to be a main charac- 
 teristic ... is, in my opinion, a mere expression of 
 his intolerable sympathy with suffering." " I believe," 
 wrote Leigh Hunt, who lived near him in Chelsea, 
 " that what Mr. Carlyle loves better than all his fault- 
 finding, with all its eloquence, is the face of any human 
 creature that looks suffering and loving and sincere." 
 The emphasis that Carlyle lays upon these qualities in 
 several of his Heroes reflects their presence in himself. 
 A third trait of character revealed in " Heroes " is 
 his deep religiousness. Carlyle's creed was not Chris- 
 tian, if " Christian " implies belief in the miraculous 
 elements of the New Testament story ; and no form of 
 church organization or creed won more than tolerance 
 from him. But as deep and unshakable as a man's 
 could be, was his belief in the reality of an unseen, 
 spiritual universe, — infinite, eternal, mysterious, yet 
 touching the world of men intimately at all points. 
 To his faith there was no dividing line between the 
 natural and the supernatural : all was miracvdous. 
 That communion of the spirit of man with the " In- 
 
XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 finite Unnamable " was possible, was his con^action. 
 " Can a man's soul, to this hour, get guidance by any 
 other method than intrinsically by that same, — de- 
 vout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before 
 the Highest, the Giver of all Light ; be such prayer 
 a spoken, articulate, or be it a voiceless, inarticulate 
 one ? There is no other method." ^ 
 
 Carlyle had the defects of his qualities. The in- 
 tensity of his hatred of semblances and untruths 
 occasionally lacked the sense of proportion, and led 
 him to spend his energies in attack on insignificant 
 evils. He thought sometimes that he had " roused a 
 lion," when he had only " started a hare." And his 
 own opinions were held with so much earnestness that 
 he was at times deaf to valid arguments on the other 
 side of the question. 
 
 If he was sensitively pitiful of the pains and hard- 
 ships of others, he was also sometimes over-impressed 
 with the sense of his own distresses, some of which, 
 in truth, were not light. Against the petty irritations 
 of daily life, — interruptions of his work-time, defects 
 of cooking, or excess of miscellaneous neighborhood 
 noises, — he was defenceless by temperament, dyspep- 
 sia, and sleeplessness. But one remembers the story of 
 Mill and the burned manuscript, and forbears to cast 
 a stone. " Not how much chaff is in you ; but whether 
 you have any wheat." ^ 
 
 As time enables us to judge more justly of this, 
 the most remarkable personality in the literary world 
 of the last century, we see in him increasingly much 
 to admire, much to love, and much less to pardon. 
 1 Heroes, p. 303. ^ Heroes, p. 86. 
 
CARLYLE'S LECTURES xxi 
 
 II 
 
 THE FOUR COURSES OF LECTURES, AND THE PUBLI- 
 CATION OF HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP 
 
 About the time that the Carlyles settled in London, 
 Emerson had suggested to Carlyle that he shoidd come 
 to America to lecture ; but the project was not cari'ied 
 out, though Emerson made most alluring estimates of 
 the profit and recognition to be gained by such a trip, 
 and the possibility was debated in their letters for a 
 number of years. However, at the suggestion of Miss 
 Martineau and several other friends, it was decided to 
 make the experiment of lecturing in London, they 
 undertaking the responsibility of all business arrange- 
 ments. The subject of the course was " German Lit- 
 erature," a subject on which Carlyle was supremely 
 qualified to speak. Nevertheless he was alarmed at the 
 prospect ; for he had never but once before addressed 
 an audience — at a dinner at Dumfries, when he had 
 said a few words — and he was determined to speak, 
 not read. He " felt as if . . . the natural speech for 
 (him) would be this : ' Good Christians, it has become 
 entirely impossible for me to talk to you about German 
 or any other 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.' " " Fool creatures 
 come hither for diversion " were likely to be his open- 
 ing words, Mrs. Carlyle suggested. " The audience . . . 
 was very humane to me," he wrote to his brother 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 John at the end of the course. "They seemed indeed 
 to be not a little astonished at the mid Annandale 
 voice which occasionally grew high and earnest. . . . 
 I hardly ever in my life had such a moment as that 
 of the commencement. ... I was wasted and fretted 
 to a thread. My tongue, let me drink as I would, con- 
 tinued dry as charcoal. The people were there ; I was 
 obliged to tumble in and start." To this Mrs. Carlyle 
 added a P. S. : "I do not find that my husband has 
 given you any adequate notion of the success of his 
 lectures ; but you will make large allowance for the 
 known modesty of the man. Nothing that he has ever 
 tried seems to me to have carried such conviction 
 to the public heart that he is a real man of genius, 
 and worth being kept alive at a moderate rate." The 
 course was given in May, 1837, and netted one hun- 
 dred and thirty-five pounds. 
 
 A second course, on "The History of Literature," 
 followed, the next year, with still greater harvest of fame 
 and funds. Even the lecturer could not blind himself 
 to its success. He wrote to his mother : " The lectures 
 went on better and better, and grew at last, or threat- 
 ened to grow, quite a flaming affair. I had people 
 greeting [weeping] yesterday. . . . My audience was 
 supposed to be the best, for rank, beauty, and intelli- 
 gence, ever collected in London." And to Emerson : 
 " The superfine people listened to the rough utterance 
 with patience, with favour, increasing to the last." 
 
 At one of the lectures of this year Mrs. Carlyle tells 
 of Carlyle's being seized with sudden panic, which nev- 
 ertheless he suppressed : " He was imputing the pro- 
 found attention with which the audience listened, to an 
 
CARLYLE'S LECTURES xxiii 
 
 awful sympathising expectation on their part of a mo- 
 mentary break-down, when all at once they broke into 
 loud plaudits, and he thought they must all have gone 
 clean out of their wits ! " But the " loud plaudits" were 
 after all not greatly to his taste, and certainly paid him 
 ill for the agouies of lecturing. " If dire famine drive 
 me," he declared, " I must even lecture, but not other- 
 wise." 
 
 In 1839, the third course, on " The Revolutions of 
 Modern Europe," attracted a still larger, still more dis- 
 tinguished audience. The inward tumidt and torment 
 of the lecturer, hardly diminished by growing familiar- 
 ity with his task, appeared in a new guise. " Unless he 
 can get hardened in this trade," wrote Mrs. Carlyle, 
 " he certainly ought to discontinue it ; for no gain or 
 eclat that it can yield is compensation enough for the 
 martyrdom it is to himself, and through him to me. 
 ... In defect of the usual measure of agitation hefoi^e- 
 hand, he has taken to the new and curious crotchet 
 of being ready to hang himself after, in the idea that 
 he has made a ' horrible pluister [mess] of it,' . . . 
 and he remains, under applause that would turn the 
 head of most Lecturers, haunted by the pale ghost of 
 last day's Lecture ' shaking its gory locks at him ' till 
 next day's arrive to take its place and torment him in 
 its turn." " In short, I felt, after it was over, like a 
 man that had been robbing henroosts," is the lecturer's 
 picturesque confession. But, after all, he admitted 
 that in the last lecture of the course he gave " very 
 considerably the nearest approach to a good lecture 
 they ever got out of me, carried the whole business 
 glowing after me, and ended half an hour beyond my 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 time with universal decisive applause sufficient for the 
 situation." 
 
 The best was yet to be. In February, 1840, Car- 
 lyle was beginning to plan for the coming season's 
 lectures, and to " have even, or seem to have, some 
 primordhim of a subject " in view. Once in motion 
 the plan developed rapidly. The course v/as definitely 
 outlined some time before the 1st of April, when he 
 bespoke Emerson's pity for his " frightful outlook 
 vnih. a Course of Lectures to give ' On Heroes and 
 Hero -Worship,' — from Odin to Robert Burns ! " The 
 " hardening " that Mrs. Carlyle desired for him was 
 yet a great way off : " My lectures come on this day 
 two weeks. O heaven ! I cannot ' speak ; ' I can only 
 gasp and writhe and stutter, a spectacle to gods and 
 fashionables, being forced to it by want of money." 
 He wrote out these lectures more carefully than the 
 preceding ones, but delivered them, as before, with- 
 out notes.i At the first lecture the " room was con- 
 siderably fuller than even before — the bonniest and 
 brawest of peoi^le," wrote Carlyle to his mother; and 
 the company was stiU larger at the later lectures. The 
 second lecture was, even to the lecturer, a manifest 
 success . " The people seemed greatly astonished and 
 greatly pleased. I vomited forth on them like wild 
 Annandale grapeshot." But we hear soon that " Jane 
 says, and indeed I rather think it is true, that these 
 [fourth and fifth] lectures are among the best I ever 
 gave." Finally, " I got through the last lecture yes- 
 terday in very tolerable style, seemingly much to the 
 
 ^ See a hitherto unpublished letter in MacMechan's Heroes 
 and Hero -Worship (Ginn & Co.), p. xxvii. 
 
CARLYLE'S LECTURES xxv 
 
 satisfaction of all parties ; and the people all expressed 
 in a great variety of ways much very genuine-look- 
 ing friendliness for nie. ... I will not be in haste 
 to throw myself into such a tumble again." To his 
 brother John he reported that " the lecturing busi- 
 ness went off with sufficient eclat. The course was 
 generally judged, and I rather join therein myself, 
 to be the bad best I have yet given. ... In a word, 
 we got right handsomely through." Carlyle's next 
 appearance as a lecturer was not until 1866, before 
 the Edinburgh students. Though he began to feel, as 
 he wrote to Emerson a month and more later, that he 
 might in the end learn to speak, and was still grate- 
 ful to " the beautiful people " that " listened with 
 bovmdless tolerance, eager attention," nevertheless he 
 writes to a friend, " It is my most ardent hope that 
 this exhibition may be my last of such ; that Neces- 
 sity with her bayonet at my back, may never again 
 drive me up thither." By. the spring of the next year 
 Necessity's bayonet was permanently unfixed, and 
 the " mixture of prophecy and ])lay-actorism," as he 
 dubbed it, renounced at the height of his success, was 
 never undertaken again. 
 
 Of Carlyle's personal appearance at this time, and 
 the way it impressed his audience, we have plentiful 
 description. His figure was tall, wiry, and gavmt, his 
 erect carriage showing no sign as j'et of the stoop of 
 the later years ; his hair was heavy, dark, and wavy, 
 over a face, smooth-shaven, whose rugged features re- 
 vealed the sturdy strength of the Scotch peasant char- 
 acter. The eyes were gray-blue, large and cl?rir raid 
 
xxvi IN TR OD UCTION 
 
 piercing, deep-set under a craggy bro-.v. The complex- 
 ion was ruddy. He had none of the arts of the prac- 
 tised orator, — at least at the start. He spoke with a 
 strong Scotch accent, vehemently, " the Annandale 
 voice gollying at them," determination to say only 
 the things known for certain sounding forth in every 
 tone of it. " Yellow as a guinea, with downcast eyes, 
 broken speech at the beginning, and fingers which 
 nervously picked at the desk before him, he could not 
 for a moment be supposed to enjoy his own effort," 
 is the impression recorded by Harriet iSIartineau, the 
 prime mover of the whole project. That the experi- 
 ence of lecturing had not been profitless to him was 
 evidenced at the opening lecture of the second course. 
 Mrs. Carlyle attended and " took one glimpse at him 
 (just one) when he came on the stage, — and to be sure 
 he was as white as a pocket-handkerchief, but he made 
 no gasping and spluttering, as I found him doing last 
 year at the fourth lecture. By and by, ... he had re- 
 covered all that ' bonny red in his cheeks ; ' . . . and 
 having a very fine light from above shining down on 
 him he really looked a surprisingly beautiful man. 
 . . . He delivered it very gracefully ; that is to say, 
 without any air of thinking about his delivery, which 
 is the best grace of any." One final glimpse of him, 
 almost at the end of the last course, is vouchsafed 
 us through the eyes of the gifted young Quakeress, 
 Caroline Fox : " The audience . . . was very thought- 
 ful and earnest in appearance ; it had come to hear 
 the Hero portrayed in the form of the Man of Let- 
 ters. Carlyle soon appeared, and looked as if he felt 
 a well-dressed London crowd scarcely the arena for 
 
CARLYLE'S LECTURES xxvii 
 
 him to figure in as a popular lecturer. He is a tall, 
 robust-looking man ; rugged simplicity and indomit- 
 able strength are in his face, and such a glow of genius 
 in it — not always smouldering there, but flashing 
 from his beautiful grey eyes, from the remoteness of 
 their deep setting under that massive brow. His man- 
 ner is very quiet, but he speaks like one tremendously 
 convinced of what he utters, and who had much — 
 very much in him that was quite unutterable, quite 
 unfit to be uttered to the uninitiated ear ; and when 
 the Englishman's sense of beauty or truth exhibited 
 itself in vociferous cheers, he would impatiently, al- 
 most contemptuously, wave his hand, as if that were 
 not the sort of homage Truth demanded. He began 
 in a rather low nervous voice, with a broad Scotch ac- 
 cent, but it soon grew firm, and shranli not abashed 
 from its great task." 
 
 While the lectures were still in progress, Carlyle 
 had already thought of printing them as a book ; and 
 rewriting them for publication (" with Emendations 
 and Additions," say the early title-pages) was the task 
 he laid upon himself to accomplish before taking a trip 
 to Scotland. Two were finished in June ; " My fourth 
 lecture was finished three days ago," he could write 
 to his mother, the first of August ; " a week hence I 
 will attack my two remaining lectures and dash them 
 off speedily." He was well tired of his task before it 
 was finished. " The whole business seems to me weari- 
 some triviality, yet toilsome to produce, which I would 
 like to throw into the fire." To find a publisher was 
 the next step, but publishers were discouragingly un- 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 responsive. As late as the 9th of December, " My 
 Hero-Lectui'es lie still in Manuscript," Emerson is 
 told. " Fraser offers no amount of cash adequate to 
 be an outward motive," But in February, 1841, he 
 has " bargained with Fraser," he writes to his mother, 
 and the lectures " are now at press. . . . He would 
 give me only =£75, the dog." 
 
 Emerson had made arrangements for the publica- 
 tion of the book in America, but Appleton anticipated 
 him with a pirated edition in April. At the end of 
 that month, Emerson writes, " The New York news- 
 papers print the book in chapters, and 3"ou circulate 
 for six cents per newspaper at the corners of all streets 
 in New York and Boston ; gaining in fame what you 
 lose in coin." Of editions since on both sides of the 
 water the number is incalculable. 
 
 Ill 
 carltle's style in heroes and hero-worship 
 
 The book thus given to the world occupies in liter- 
 ary form and style a middle ground between the half 
 extempore lecture and the finished essay, being more 
 carefully wrought than the former, but in a manner 
 consciously more informal, less literary, than the lat- 
 ter. " The style of them requires to be low-pitched, 
 as like talk as possible," Carlyle wrote to his brother 
 while preparing the book for the press. Nevertheless 
 it exhibits many of the characteristics of the typical 
 " Carlylese," the strength which is more often the 
 might of the full mountain torrent than the quiet 
 power of the wide river. In " Heroes " the unex- 
 
CARLYLE'S STYLE xxix 
 
 pected turns and transitions are more noticeable even 
 than in Carlyle's usual style, and the mention in his 
 gracious apologetic farewell of " these abrupt utter- 
 ances thrown-out isolated " is not without justification. 
 The sudden breaks and changes of construction, the 
 dismembered sentences, the unusual (or at least un- 
 literary) idiomatic expressions, are "as like talk as 
 possible ; " while the accent and intonation of the lec- 
 turer's voice become almost audible with the aid of 
 unusually plentiful italics, capitals, dashes, and ex- 
 clamation points. As he wrote, it seems as if he must 
 have imagined himself once again actually speaking 
 to his audience. 
 
 Although talk, even when as carefully prepared as 
 these lectures were, can never without affectation dis- 
 play as much literary ornament as befits the more 
 deliberate and accomplished forms of writing, yet the 
 style of " Heroes " is notable, if in a less degree than" 
 that of Carlyle's other books, for its wealth of illus- 
 tration, allusion, and quotation, the abundant fruit of 
 his voracious i-eading and retentive memory. In a 
 similar way the diction of "Heroes," more simple 
 than that of " Sartor Resartus " or " The French Rev- 
 olution," is nevertheless conspicuous for its rich vari- 
 ety, — the vocabulary employed in Carlyle's works all 
 together being, by accession of borrowed, coined, and 
 new-compounded words, more extensive than that of 
 any other English writer save Shakspeare. 
 
 One of the most characteristic marks of Carlyle's 
 literary handiwork is his love of concrete image or pic- 
 turesque illustration, even when dealing with abstract 
 or undefined material. Out of this arises incidentally 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION 
 
 the oft employed device of pluralizing proper nouns, 
 the " Dantes " and " Luthers " of the old Norse race, 
 the " Goethes " and " Shakspeares " of the modern 
 world, summing up in a word the substance of pages 
 of conjecture or comment. Conversely, such an image 
 as that of the whole of human existence, " the infinite 
 conjugation of the verb To do,'^ figured concretely in 
 the Tree Igdrasil, wins at once his enthusiastic accep- 
 tance. 
 
 If he pictures abstract ideas, so much the more do 
 his words, like his father's, render "almost ocularly 
 visible " the external aspects of nature or " the human 
 face divine," — as witness, in " Heroes," the descrip- 
 tions of Iceland and Arabia, and the portraits of Dante 
 and Luther. Emerson, in- a letter to Carlyle, speaks 
 of " those thirsty eyes, those portrait-eating, portrait- 
 painting eyes of thine." It is a fact worthy of note 
 that one of the most persuasive expounders of the 
 mystical transcendental philosophy, whose favorite quo- 
 tation was Prospero's famous words in " The Tem- 
 pest," " We are such stuff as dreams are made on," 
 should be conspicuous above most other writers for 
 the realism and concreteness of his style. 
 
 Sincerity and strength made a more forcible appeal 
 to Carlyle than grace and delicacy, as his style plainly 
 indicates. He is Thor, thundering at false semblance 
 of every sort, gripping the hammer of his prose style 
 " till the knuckles grow white," illuminating his sub- 
 ject with lightning flashes of insight, rather than 
 Apollo, beautiful, radiant, casting a gently increasing 
 light, quelling sei'pents with carefully aimed arrows. 
 "A cei'tain homely truthfidness and rustic strength, a 
 
CARLYLE'S STYLE xxxi 
 
 great rude sincerity, discloses itself here," as Carlyle 
 himself said of Thor's religion as compared with 
 Apollo's. So much the more, by contrast, the occa- 
 sional sudden glory of beauty or tenderness," like bright 
 metal on a sullen ground," surprises and delights. 
 Carlyle had no talent for versifying, nor had he pa- 
 tience to obey the rules of metrical composition, though 
 some of his verse translations are well done ; but the 
 rhythm of his prose rises spontaneously at times into 
 Miltonic harmonies, and with other gifts of the poet 
 he was richly endowed. " There are," says Mr. Augus- 
 tine Birrell,^ in one of the best short appreciations of 
 Carlyle ever written, " passages in ' Sartor Resartus ' 
 and the ' French Revolution ' which have long appeared 
 to me to be the sublimest poetry of the century ; and 
 it was therefore with great jjleasure that I found Mr. 
 Justice Stephen . . . introducing a quotation from 
 the eighth chapter of the third book of ' Sartor Resar- 
 tus' mth the remark that ' it is perhaps the most mem- 
 orable utterance of the greatest poet of the age.' " 
 
 One quality of the true Carlylese, and that nearly 
 if not quite the most pervasive, the play of a some- 
 what grotesque sense of humor, is almost entirely miss- 
 ing from " Heroes." There is just a touch of it in the 
 " reservoir of Dukes " at Leipzig,^ and in one or two 
 other passages ; but one may imagine that the travail 
 of soul that accompanied the preparation of the lec- 
 tures, as well as the scorn of cheap methods of win- 
 ning applause, might have discouraged its customary 
 activity. A nd after all, the Carlylean humor was never 
 of the platform type. 
 
 ^ Obiter Dicta, First Series, pp. 44, 45. ^ Page 196. 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 IV 
 
 CAKLTLE S TEACHINGS IN HEROES AND 
 HERO-WORSHIP 
 
 The main thesis of the book is that " Universal His- 
 tory is at bottom the History of the Great Men who 
 have worked here ; " or, stating the same idea from a 
 different point of view, that " in all times and places 
 the Hero has been worshipped. It will ever be so . . . 
 we all of ns reverence and must ever reverence Great 
 Men." This doctrine, like most of Cavlyle's, had been 
 already clearly propounded in " Sartor Resartus." In 
 the chapter entitled " The Centre of Indifference " he 
 writes : " Great Men are the inspired (speaking and 
 acting) Texts of that divine Book of Hevelations, 
 whereof a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, 
 and by some named History; to which inspired Texts 
 your numerous talented men, and your innumerable 
 untalented men, are the better or worse exegetic com- 
 mentaries, and wagonload of too-stupid, heretical or 
 orthodox, weekly Sermons. For my study, the inspired 
 Texts themselves ! " And again, later in the book, 
 in " Organic Filaments : " " Meanwhile, observe with 
 joy, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatso- 
 ever man ought to obey he cannot but obey. Before 
 no faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever stand 
 irreverent ; least of all, when the Godlike showed it- 
 self revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a true 
 religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart ; nay, in 
 all ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more 
 
CARLYLE'S TEACHINGS xxxni 
 
 or less orthodox Hero-worship. In which fact, that 
 Hero-worship exists, has existed, and will forever exist, 
 universally among Mankind, mayest thou discern the 
 corner-stone of living-rock, whereon all PoKties for the 
 remotest time may stand secure." 
 
 The varieties of Heroes are, of course, as many as 
 the varieties of human activity ; in the present hook 
 Carlyle chose to recognize six classes because he was 
 to give a course of six lectures. But one of the basal 
 ideas of Carlyle's hero-doctrine is that all heroes are 
 of essentially the same stuff : " The Hero can be Poet, 
 Prophet, King, Priest, or what you will, according to 
 the kind of world he finds himself born into." " True, 
 there are aptitudes of Nature," he grants, but into 
 what form of activity the God-given hero-stuff shall be 
 finally molded by circumstances is " an inexjjlicably 
 complex controversial-calculation between the world 
 and him ! " Carlyle gives many names to the heroic 
 quality which ••' we have no good name 'for : " sincerity, 
 originality, intellect, genius, inspiration, insight, — 
 they have all at bottom the idea of the ability to see 
 through the deceitful " shows of things " into the true 
 heart of things, the power to distinguish between the 
 essential and the superficial. " The flame-image of 
 Reality glares-in " upon the hero; and,, obedient to 
 the irresistible power of that vision, he orders his life 
 in accord with eternal truth. Such is the " sincerity " 
 upon which, with ever intensified emphasis, Carlyle 
 insists. 
 
 The stress thus laid upon " the seeing eye," the 
 power to penetrate through appearances, is associated 
 with a fundamental conception in Carlyle's philoso- 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 phy, often expressed in the following pages, that 
 what is perceived in the material world is rather what 
 the senses have the power of perceiving than what 
 really exists. " The world of Nature, for every man, 
 is the Phantasy of Himself." How much more, then, 
 do the more subjective aspects of spiritual truth de- 
 mand a clear inner vision ! 
 
 The immediate practical aim of the individual lec- 
 tures was, by the application of the theory in specific 
 cases, to establish a right — in several instances, a 
 new — interpretation of the character, and a right 
 valuation of the influence, of certain great men of the 
 past ; among whom Mahomet, Knox, Boswell, Burns, 
 and Cromwell owe mainly to Carlyle the recognition 
 that the present age accords them. Thus the book 
 becomes " a gallery of biograjjhical portraiture, which 
 no student of the men depicted by it can neglect." 
 
 In the weariness of re-writing the lectures, Carlyle 
 had condemned them as having " nothing new, nothing 
 that to me is not old.'"' The charge is true, in a sense, 
 of the moral teaching of all of his books after '•' Sar- 
 tor Resartus." The gospel that he felt called to 
 preach consisted of a few fundamental principles which 
 he proclaimed repeatedly with unflagging earnestness. 
 That higher ^han happiness is blessedness, the blessed- 
 ness of knowing and doing one's work ; that surren- 
 der of self, " trusting imperturbably in the appointment 
 and choice of the upper Powers," is not only a duty 
 but a necessity ; that " a man lives by believing some- 
 thing," and that without belief no genuine, fruitful 
 acting is possible, but only " dexterous Similitude of 
 Acting;" that the nature of duty is infinite: "Would 
 
CARLYLE'S TEACHINGS xxxv 
 
 in this world is a mere zero to Should ; " that right 
 and might are in the long run identical ; that the ideal 
 government for any people is a government of the 
 ablest man or men, a hero-archy ; and that the business 
 of government is not led sser fair e, to let things take 
 care of themselves, but to be the guardian and guide 
 of the less heroic — the principle of state interference 
 being a fundamental point of Carlyle's political teach- 
 ing: these were the truths that he strove without 
 ceasing to impress upon his age and generation. To 
 the persevering reader of Carlyle they become as fa- 
 miliar actors on the scene, having their exits and their 
 entrances, and each one in its time playing its part 
 in many different books. 
 
 Of " Heroes " in particular the moral appeal is com- 
 prehended in the words with which Carlyle closes his 
 discussion of the function of the Hero-Priest : ^ "If 
 Hero mean sincere tnan^ why may not every one of 
 us be a Hero ? A world all sincere, a believing world : 
 the like has been ; the like will be again, — cannot 
 help being. That were the right sort of Worshippers 
 for Heroes : never could the truly Better be so rev- 
 •ereneed as where all were True and Good ! " 
 
 " It is a goustrous determined speaking out of the 
 truth about several things," was Carlyle's final comment 
 vn the book. " The people will be no worse for it at 
 present. The astonishment of many of them is likely 
 to be considerable." "Heroes and Hero -Worship" no 
 longer astonishes ; for Carlyle's teaching has become 
 an essential, indistinguishable element in the thought 
 of the present age : even as he says in the opening lec- 
 1 Heroes, p. 178. 
 
xxxvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 ture, " Every true Thinker to this hour is a kind o£ 
 Odin, teax;hes men his way of thought, spreads a 
 shadow of his own likeness over sections of the His- 
 tory of the World." To us the book stands as the 
 impassioned utterance of a great modern prophet, a 
 powerful inspiration to nobler thinking and feeling 
 and doing, a scripture in which we may rightly think 
 we have "flame-images" of eternal truths. 
 
ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 HEROIC IN HISTORY 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM : 
 SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY 
 
 [Tuesday, 5tli May 1840.] 
 We have undertaken to discourse here for a little 
 on Great Men, their manner of appearance in our 
 world's business, how they have shaped themselves in 
 the world's history, what ideas men formed of them, 
 what work they did; — on Heroes, namely, and on 
 their reception and performance ; what I call Hero- 
 worship and the Heroic in human affairs. Too evi- 
 dently this is a large topic ; deserving quite other 
 treatment than we can expect to give it at present. 
 A large topic ; indeed, an illimitable one ; wide as Uni- 
 versal History itself. For, as I take it. Universal His- 
 tory, 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 
 great ones ; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense 
 creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men con- 
 trived to do or to attain ; all things that we see standing 
 accomplished in the world are properly the outer mate- 
 rial result, the practical realisation and embodiment, 
 of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the 
 
2 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 world : the soul of the whole world's history, it may 
 justly be considered, were the 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, how- 
 ever imperfectly, upon a gi'cat man, without gaining 
 something by him. He is the living light-fountain, 
 which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light 
 which enlightens, which has enlightened 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 
 original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness ; 
 — in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with 
 them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge 
 to wander in such neighbourhood for a while. These 
 Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely-distant 
 countries and epochs, and in mere external figure 
 differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully at 
 them, to illustrate several things for us. Could we see 
 them well, we should get some glimpses into the very 
 marrow of the world's history. How hapjiy, could 
 1 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, I must make the attempt. 
 
 It is well said, in every sense, that a man's religion 
 is the chief fact with regard to him. A man's, or a 
 nation of men's. By religion I do not mean here the 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 3 
 
 church-creed which he professes, the articles of faith 
 which he will sign and, in words or otherwise, assert ; 
 not this wholly, in many cases not this at all. We see 
 men of all kinds of professed creeds attain to almost all 
 degrees of worth or worthlessuess under each Or any of 
 them. This is not what I call religion, this profession 
 and assertion ; which is often only a profession and as- 
 sertion 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 himseK, 
 much less to others) ; the thing a man does practically 
 lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital 
 relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and 
 destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for 
 him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is 
 his religion ; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and 
 no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself 
 to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No- 
 World ; and I say, if you tell me what tliat is, you tell 
 me to a very great extent what the man is, what the 
 kind of things he will do is. Of a man or of a nation 
 we inquire, therefore, first of all, What religion they 
 had ? Was it Heathenism, — plurality of gods, mere 
 sensuous representation of this Mystery of Life, and 
 for chief recognised element tlierein 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, uncertainty and 
 inquiry whether there was an Unseen World, any 
 
4 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Mystery of Life except a mad one ; — doubt as to all 
 this, or jjerliaps unbelief and flat denial? Answering 
 of this question is giving us the soul of the history 
 of the man or nation. The thoughts they had were 
 the parents of the actions they did ; their feelings 
 were parents of their thoughts : 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 reli- 
 gious 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 Pagan- 
 ism ; an emblem to us of a most extensive province of 
 things. Let us look for a little at the Hero as Divin- 
 ity, the oldest primary form of Heroism. 
 
 Surely it seems a very strange-looking thing this 
 Paganism ; almost inconceivable to us in these days. 
 A bewildering, inextricable jungle of delusions, confu- 
 sions, falsehoods, and absurdities, covering the whole 
 field of Life ! A thing that fills us with astonishment, 
 ahnost, if it were possible, with incredulity, — for truly 
 it is not easy to understand that sane men could ever 
 cahiily, with their eyes open, believe and live by such 
 a set of doctrines. That men should have worshipped 
 their poor fellow-man as a God, and not him only, but 
 stocks and stones, and all manner of animate and inan- 
 imate objects ; and fashioned for themselves such a dis- 
 tracted chaos of hallucinations by way of Theory of the 
 Universe : all this looks like an incredible fable. Never- 
 theless, it is a clear fact that they did it. Such hideous 
 inextricable jungle of misworships, misbeliefs, men, 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 5 
 
 matle 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 at- 
 tained 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, say they ; no sane man ever did believe 
 it, — merely contrived to persuade other men, not 
 worthy of the name of sane, to believe it ! It will be 
 often our duty to protest against this sort of hjqiothe- 
 sis about men's doings and history ; and I here, on the 
 very threshold, protest against it in reference to Pagan- 
 ism, 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 
 stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded ; but 
 quackery was never the originating influence in such 
 things ; it was not the health and life of such things, 
 but their disease, the sure precursor of their being 
 about to die ! Let us never forget this. It seems to 
 me a most mournful hypothesis, that of quackery giving 
 birth to any faith even in savage men. Quackery gives 
 birth to 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 ; as mere diseases, corruptions, 
 with which our and all men's sole duty is to have 
 done with them, to sweep them out of our thoughts 
 
6 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 as out of our practice. Man everywhere is the born 
 enemy of lies. I find Grand Lamaismi itself to have 
 a kind of truth in it. Read the candid, clear-sighted, 
 rather sceptical Mr. Turner's Account of his Em- 
 hassy ^ 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 some belief in a kind of 
 Pope ! At bottom still better, belief that there is a 
 Greatest Man ; that he is discoverable ; that, once 
 discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience 
 which knows no bounds ! This is the truth of Grand 
 Lamaism ; the ' discoverability ' is the only error here. 
 The Thibet priests have methods of their own of dis- 
 covering what Man is Greatest, fit to be supreme over 
 them. Bad methods : but are they so much worse 
 than our methods, — of understanding him to be always 
 the eldest-born of a certain genealogy? Alas, it is a 
 difficult thing to find good methods for ! — We shall 
 begin to have a chance of understanding Paganism, 
 when we first admit that to its followers it was, at one 
 time, earnestly true. Let us consider it very certain 
 
 1 Lamaism is a form of Buddhism. Buddha is supposed to be 
 incarnate in the grand lamas, the priest-gods, of whom the 
 Dalai Lama at Lhassa is the most important. On the death of a 
 grand lama, the spirit passes to another incarnation, eitlier telling 
 before death or indicating afterward by a sign in what young 
 child it is to be found. 
 
 2 Captain Samuel Turner, An Account of an Embassy to the 
 Court of the Teshoo Lama in Tibet, etc. London, 180G. See espe- 
 cially Part II, chaps, viii and ix. He describes (pp. 333-335) his 
 official visit to an eighteen months' old lama who received him 
 with great dignity and decorum, and every evidence of under- 
 standing, though not yet old enough to talk. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 7 
 
 that men did believe in Paganism ; men with open eyes, 
 sound senses, men made altogether like oui'selves ; 
 that we, had we been there, should have believed in 
 it. Ask now. What Paganism coidd have been ? 
 
 Another theory, somewhat more respectable, attrib- 
 utes such things to Allegory. It was a play of poetic 
 minds, say these theorists ; a shadowing-forth, in alle- 
 gorical fable, in personification and visual form, of 
 what such poetic minds had known and felt of this 
 Universe. Which agrees, add they, with a primary 
 law of human nature, still everywhei-e observably at 
 work, though in less important things. That what a 
 man feels intensely, he struggles to speak-out of him, 
 to see represented before him in visual shape, and as 
 if with a kiiid of life and historical reality in it. Now 
 doubtless there is such a law, and it is one of the 
 deepest in human nature ; neither need we doubt that 
 it did operate fundamentally in this business. The 
 hypothesis which ascribes Paganism wholly or mostly 
 to this agency, I call a little more respectable ; but I 
 cannot yet call it the true hypothesis. Think, would 
 we believe, and take with us as our life-guidance, 
 an allegory, a poetic sport ? Not sport but earnest is 
 what we should require. It is a most earnest thing to 
 be alive in this world ; to die is not sport for a man. 
 Man's life never was a sport to him ; it was a stern 
 reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive I 
 
 I find, therefore, that though these Allegory the- 
 orists are on the way towards truth in this matter, 
 they have not reached it either. Pagan Religion is 
 indeed an Allegory, a Symbol of what men felt and 
 knew about the Universe ; and all Religions are Sym- 
 
8 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 bols of that, altering always as that alters : but it seems 
 to me a radical perversion, and even i/j version, of the 
 business, to put that forward as the origin and mov- 
 ing cause, when it was rather the result and termina- 
 tion. To get beautiful allegories, a perfect poetic sym- 
 bol, was not the want of men ; but to know what they 
 were to believe about this Universe, what course they 
 were to steer in it ; what, in this m3'sterious Life of 
 theirs, they had to hope and to fear, to do and to for- 
 bear doing. The Pilgrinis Progress is an Allegory, 
 and a beautiful, just and serious one : but consider 
 whether Bunyan's ^ Allegory could have j^receded the 
 Faith it symbolises I The Faith had to be already 
 there, standing believed by everybody ; — of which the 
 Allegory could then become a shadow ; aiid, with all 
 its seriousness, we may say a sportful shadow, a mere 
 play of the Fancy, in comparison with that awful Fact 
 and scientific certainty which it poetically strives to 
 emblem. The Allegory is the product of the certainty, 
 not the producer of it ; not in Bunyan's nor in any 
 other case. For Paganism, therefore, we have still to 
 inquire, Whence came that scientific certainty, the 
 parent of such a bewildered heap of allegories, errors 
 and confusions ? How was it, what was it ? 
 
 Surely it were a foolish attempt to pretend ' explain- 
 ing,' in this place, or in any place, such a phenome- 
 non as that far-distant distracted cloudy imbroglio ^ of 
 Paganism, — more like a cloudfield than a distant 
 continent of firm land and facts ! It is no longer a 
 
 ^ John Bunyan : 1628-1688, Pilgrim's Progress, First Part, 
 1678; Second Part, 1684. 
 2 Entaiigleuient. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 9 
 
 reality, yet it was one. We ougbt to understand that 
 this seeming cloudfield 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 soid's life on allegories : 
 men in all times, especially in early earnest times, 
 have had an instinct for detecting quacks, for detest- 
 ing quacks. Let us try if, leaving out both the quack 
 theory and the allegory one, and listening with affec- 
 tionate 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 mendacious and dis« 
 tracted, but in their own poor way true and sane ! 
 
 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 would his wonder be, his rapt astonishment 
 at the sight we daily witness with indifference ! With 
 the free open sense of a child, yet with the ripe fac- 
 ulty 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 chikl, yet with the depth 
 and strength of a man. Nature had as yet no name to 
 
 ^ " Behold ! human beings living in an underground den." 
 Plato's Republic, beginning of Bk. vii. See Jowett's translation 
 (N. Y. 1892), iii, 214-217. 
 
10 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 him ; he had not yet united under a name the infinite 
 variety of sights, sounds, shapes and motions, which 
 we now collectively name Universe, Nature, or the 
 like, — and so with a name dismiss it from us. To 
 the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled 
 under names or formulas ; it stood naked, flashing-in 
 on him there, beautiful, a^vful, unspeakable. Nature 
 was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it 
 for ever is, pi'eteru2itx\T2l. This green flowery rock- 
 built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many- 
 sounding seas ; — that great deep sea of azure that 
 swims overhead ; the winds sweeping through it ; the 
 black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring 
 out fire, now hail and rain ; what is it ? Ay, what ? 
 At bottom we do not yet know ; we can never know 
 at all. It is not b}' our superior insight that we escape 
 the difficulty ; it is by our superior levity, our inatten- 
 tion, our want of insight. It is by not thinking that 
 we cease to wonder at it. Hardened round us, encas- 
 ing wholly every notion we form, is a wrappage of 
 traditions, hearsays, mere words. We call that fire 
 of the black thunder-cloud ' electricity,' and lecture 
 learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of 
 glass and silk : but what is it ? What made it ? Whence 
 comes it ? Whither goes it ? Science has done much 
 for us ; but it is a poor science that would hide from us 
 the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither 
 we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a 
 mere superficial film. This world, 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 Time, were there no other; 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 11 
 
 tie illimitable, silent, never-resting thing called Time, 
 rolling, rushing on, swift, silent, like an all-embracing 
 ocean-tide, on which we and all the Universe swim 
 like exhalations, like apparitions which are, and then 
 are not : this is for ever very literally a miracle ; a 
 thing to strike us dumb, — for we have no word to 
 speak about it. This Universe, ah me — what could 
 the wild man know of it ; what can we yet know ? 
 That it is a Force, and thousandfold Complexity of 
 Forces ; a Force which is not we. That is all ; it is 
 not we, it is altogether different from ws. Force, 
 Force, everywhere Force ; we ourselves a mysterious 
 Force in the centre of that. ' There is not a leaf rot- 
 ting on the highway but has Foree in it : how else 
 could it rot ? ' Nay surely, to the Atheistic Thinker, 
 if such a one were possible, it must be a miracle too, 
 this huge illimitable whirlwind of Force, which envel- 
 ops us here ; never-resting whirlwind, high as Immen- 
 sity, old as Eternity. What is it ? God's creation, the 
 religious people answer ; it is the Almighty God's ! 
 Atheistic science babbles poorly of it, with scientific 
 nomenclatures, experiments and what-not, as if it were 
 a poor dead thing, to be bottled-up in Leyclen jars and 
 sold over counters : but the natural sense of man, in 
 all times, if he will honestly apply his sense, proclaims 
 it to be a living thing, — ah, an unspeakable, godlike 
 thing ; towards which the best attitude for us, after 
 never so much science, is awe, devout prostration and 
 humility of soul ; worship if not in words, then in si- 
 lence. 
 
 But now I remark further : What in such a time 
 as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us. 
 
12 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 namely, the stripping-off of those poor undevout wrap- 
 pages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays, — this, 
 the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with 
 these things, did for itself. The world, which is now 
 divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whoso- 
 ever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare be- 
 fore it face to face. ' All was Godlike or God : ' — 
 Jean Paul ^ still finds it so ; the giant Jean Paul, who 
 has power to escape out of hearsa3's : but there then 
 were no hearsays. Canopus ^ shining-down over the 
 desert, with its blue diamond brightness (that wild 
 blue spirit-like brightness, far brighter than we ever 
 witness here), would pierce into the heart of the 
 wild Ishmaelitish ^ man, whom it was guiding through 
 the solitary waste there. To his wild heart, with all 
 feelings in it, with no speech for any feeling, it might 
 seem a little eye, that Canopus, glaneing-out on him 
 from the great deep Eternity ; revealing the inner 
 Splendour to him. Cannot we understand how these 
 men rcorshipped Canopus ; became what we call Sa- 
 beans * worshipping the stars ? Such is to me the secret 
 of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent 
 
 ^ Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (1763-1825), the greatest humor- 
 ist in modern German literature. His rather barbarous and 
 chaotic style and his idealism powerfully iufluenced Carlyle, 
 who wrote two essays on hitn, and quotes hini constantly. The 
 quotation liere is from Carlyle's translation of RicLter's Quintus 
 Fixlein, end. 
 
 2 A bright star in Argo, iu the Southern Hemisphere, invisi- 
 ble in most of North America. 
 
 ^ See p. 68, n. 3. 
 
 * From Saba, the host of heaven. They worshipped the sun, 
 moon, fixed stars, and planets, which they believed to be the 
 bodily appearances of celestial spirits. See p. 67, top. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 13 
 
 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 Godlike, of some God. ' 
 
 And look what perennial fibre of truth was in that. 
 To us also, through every star, through every blade of 
 grass, is not a God made visible, if we will open our 
 minds and eyes ? We do not worship in that way now : 
 but is it not reckoned still a merit, proof of what we 
 call a ' poetic nature,' that we recognise how every 
 object has a divine beauty in it ; how every object 
 still verily is ' a window through which we may look 
 into Infinitude itself ' ? He that can discern the love- 
 liness of things, we call him Poet, Painter, Man of 
 Genius, gifted, lovable. These poor Sabeans did even 
 what he does, — in their own fashion. That they did 
 it, in what fashion soever, was a merit : better than 
 what the entirely stupid man did, what the horse and 
 camel did, — namely, nothing ! 
 
 But now if all things whatsoever that we look upon 
 are emblems to us of the Highest God, I add that 
 more so than any of them is man such an emblem. 
 You have heard of St. Chrysostom's ^ celebrated saying 
 in reference to the Shekinah,^ or Ark of Testimony, 
 visible Revelation of God, among the Hebrews : " The 
 true Shekinah is Man ! " Yes, it is even so : this is 
 no vain phrase ; it is veritably so. The essence of our 
 
 ^ Chrysostom, " Golden-montlied " (347-407), preacher-orator 
 of the early Greek Church. Archbishop of Constantinople from 
 398. 
 
 ^ The symbol of the Divine Presence in shape of a cloud or 
 light over the Jewish Ark of the Covenant. See Exodus xxv, 
 10 ff. ; Numbers vii, 89 ; ix, 15 ff. 
 
14 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 being, the mystery in us that calls itself " I," — ah, 
 what words have we for such things ? — is a breath of 
 Heaven; the Highest Being reveals himself in man. 
 This body, these faculties, this life of ours, is it not all 
 as a vesture for that Unnamed ? ' There is but one 
 Temple in the Universe,' says the devout Novalis,! 
 ' and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than 
 that high form. Bending before men is a reverence 
 done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven 
 when we lay our hand on a human body ! ' This 
 sounds much like a mere flourish of rhetoric ; but it is 
 not so. If well meditated, it will turn out to be a 
 scientific fact ; the expression, in such words as can 
 be had, of the actual truth of the thing. We are the 
 miracle of miracles, — the great inscrutable mystery 
 of God. We cannot understand it, we know not how 
 to speak of it ; but we may feel and know, if we like, 
 that it is verily so. 
 
 Well ; these truths were once more readily felt than 
 now. The young generations of the world, who had in 
 them the freshness of young children, and yet the 
 depth of earnest men, who did not think they had 
 finished-off aU things in Heaven and Earth by merely 
 giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct 
 at them there, with awe and wonder : they felt better 
 what of divinity is in man and Nature ; — they, with- 
 out being mad, could worship Nature, and man more 
 
 ^ The pseudonym of Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg 
 (1772-1801), German poet and mystic. See Carlyle's essay on 
 Lim. In the quotation, Novalis adapts from 1 Cor. iii : " Know ye 
 not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwell- 
 etli in you ? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God 
 destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are." 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 15 
 
 than anything else in Nature. Worship, that is, as I 
 said above, admire without limit : this, in the full use 
 of their faculties, with all sincerity of heart, they 
 could do. I consider Hero-Avorship to be the grand 
 modifying element in that ancient system of thought. 
 What I called the perplexed jungle of Paganism 
 sprang, we may say, out of many roots : every admi- 
 ration, adoration of a star or natural object, was a root 
 or fibre of a root ; but Hero-worship is the deepest 
 rooi of all ; the tap-root, from which in a great de- 
 gree all the rest were nourished and grown. 
 
 And now if worship even of a star had some mean- 
 ing in it, how much more might that of a Hero ! 
 Worship of a Hero is transcendent admiration of a 
 Great Man. I say great men are still admirable ! I 
 say there is, at the bottom, nothing else admirable ! 
 No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one 
 higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It 
 is to this hour, and at' all hours, the vivifying in- 
 fluence 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, heart- 
 felt prostrate admiration, submission, burning, bound- 
 less, for a noblest godlike Form of Man, — is not 
 that the germ of Christianity itself? The greatest 
 of all Heroes is One — whom we do not name here ! 
 Let sacred silence meditate that sacred matter ; you 
 will find it the ultimate perfection of a principle 
 extant throughout man's whole history on earth. 
 
 Or coming into lower, less ?/??speakable provinces, is 
 not all Loyalty akin to religious Faith also? Faith is 
 loyalty to some inspired Teacher, some spiritual Hero. 
 
16 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 And what therefore is loyalty proper, the life-breath of 
 all society, but an effluence of Hero-worshij), submis- 
 sive admiration for the truly great ? Society is founded 
 on Hero-worship. All dignities of rank, on which hu- 
 man association rests, are what we may call a Ilero- 
 archy (Government of Heroes), — or a Hierarch}-, for 
 it is ' sacred ' enough withal I The Duke means Dux^ 
 Leader ; King is Kbn-7iing^ Jlcdi-iiuh/, Man that hwws 
 or cans} Society everywhere is some representation, 
 not iwsupportably inaccurate, of a graduated Worship 
 of Heroes ; — reverence and obedience done to men 
 really great and wise. Not iwsupportably inaccurate, 
 I say ! They are all as bank-notes, these social digni- 
 taries, all representing gold ; — and several oi them, 
 alas, always 2ive forged notes. We can do with some 
 forged false notes ; with a good many even ; but not 
 with all, or the most of them forged ! No : there have 
 to come revolutions then : cries of Democracy, Liberty 
 and Equality, and I know not what : — the notes being 
 all false, and no gold to be had for them^ peojDle take 
 to crying in their despair that there is no gold, that 
 there never was an}^ I — ' Gold,' Hero-worship, is never- 
 theless, 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 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 
 
 ^ King is really O. E. cyning (cynn -|- patronymic ing) or cyng 
 = scion of the (noble) kin, or son (or descendant) of one of (no- 
 ble) birth. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 17 
 
 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 but melancholy 
 work. The Time call forth ? Alas, we have known 
 Times call loudly enough for their great man ; but not 
 find him when they called ! He was not there ; Provi- 
 dence had not sent him ; the Time, calling its loudest, 
 had to go down to confusion and wreck because he 
 would not come when called. 
 
 For if we will think of it, no Time need have gone 
 to ruin, could it have found a man great enough, a 
 man wise and good enough : wisdom to discern tridy 
 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, vdth their un- 
 belief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting 
 characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently 
 crumbling down into ever worse distress towards final 
 ruin ; — all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for 
 the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The 
 great man, with his free force direct out of God's o\m. 
 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 fire like his 
 own. The dry nioulderiug sticks are thought to have 
 called him forth. They did want him greatly ; but as 
 to calling: him forth — ! — Those are critics of small 
 
18 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 vision, I think, who cry : " See, is it not the sticks that 
 made the fire ? " No sadder proof can he given by a 
 man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men. 
 There is no sadder symptom of a generation than such 
 general blindness to the spiritual lightning, with faitli 
 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 fuid the Great Man to have been the 
 indispensable saviour of his epoch; — the lightning, 
 without which the fuel never would have burnt. The 
 History of the World, I said already, was the Biogra- 
 phy of Great Men. 
 
 Such small critics do what they can to promote un- 
 belief and universal spiritual paralysis : but happily 
 they cannot always completely succeed. In all times it 
 is possible for a man to arise great enough to feel that 
 they and their doctrines are chimeras ^ and cobwebs. 
 And what is notable, in no time whatever can they 
 entirely eradicate out of living men's hearts a certain 
 altogether peculiar reverence for Great Men ; genuine 
 admiration, loyalty, adoration, however dim and per- 
 verted it may be. Hero-worship endiires forever while 
 man endures. Boswell venerates his Johnson, right 
 truly even in the Eighteenth century. The unbeliev- 
 ing French believe in their Voltaire ; ^ and burst-out 
 
 ^ A fire-breathing monster of Greek mythology, with a lion's 
 head, a goat's body, and a serpent's tail, or sometimes repre- 
 sented as having the heads of these tliree animals. A favorite 
 term of Carlyle's for an imposing-looking inanity or unreal- 
 ity. 
 
 2 Witty satirist, poet and dramatist, and miscellaneous prose- 
 writer (1694-1778). Most of the matters alluded to in the rest 
 of the paragraph are narrated in Carlyle's Essay on Voltaire. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 19 
 
 round him into very curious Hero-worship, in that last 
 act of his life when they ' stifle ]x\\\\ 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 An- 
 tichrist, does again on this side exhibit a curious con- 
 trast. No people ever were so little prone to admire 
 at all as those French of Voltaire. Persiflage ^ was 
 the character of their whole mind ; adoration had no- 
 where a place in it. Yet see ! The old man of Ferney ^ 
 comes up to Paris ; an old, tottering, infirm man of 
 eighty-four years. They feel that he too is a kind of 
 Hero ; that he has spent his life in opposing error and 
 injustice, delivering Calases,^ unmasking hypocrites in 
 high places ; — in shoi't that he too, though in a strange 
 way, has fought like a valiant man. They feel witlial 
 that, if persiflage be the great thing, there never was 
 such ?ipersifleur. 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 they are fit for. Accordingly all 
 persons, from the Queen Antoinette to the Douanier * 
 at the Porte St. Denis, do they not worship him ? 
 People of quality disguise themselves as tavern -waiters. 
 The Maitre de Poste, with a broad oath, orders his 
 
 ^ Flippant banter, or quizzing. 
 
 ^ In eastern France near Geneva, home of Voltaire from 1758. 
 
 ^ Jean Galas, victim of religions hatred, was executed un- 
 justly (1762) for murder. His widow fled to Switzerland, and 
 won the sympathy of Voltaire, who vindicated the reputation of 
 the family. 
 
 ■* Custom-house officer. 
 
20 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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, 
 beautifuler, nobler. 
 
 Yes, from Norse Odin to English Samuel Johnson, 
 from the divine Founder of Christianity to the with- 
 ered Pontiff of Encyclopedism,2 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 hon- 
 estly bow down to anything else ? Ah, does not every 
 true man feel that he is hin\self 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 in- 
 born loyalty and worship that is in man. In times of 
 unbelief, which soon have to become times of revolu- 
 tion, much down-rushing, sorrowful decay and ruin 
 is visible to everybody. For myself, in these days, I 
 seem to see in this indestructibility of Hero-worship 
 the everlasting adamant lower than which the con- 
 fused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall. The 
 confused wreck of things crumbling and even crashing 
 
 1 Go fast. 
 
 2 Voltaire contributed to the Encyclopedle of Diderot and 
 others, which was made the vehicle of radical and materialistic 
 philosophical views. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 21 
 
 and tumLling all round us in these revolutionary ages, 
 will get down so far ; no farther. It is an eternal 
 corner-stone, from which they can begin to build them- 
 selves up again. That man, in some sense or other, 
 worships Heroes ; that we all of us reverence and must 
 ever reverence Great Men : this is, to me, the living- 
 rock amid all rusliings-down whatsoever ; — the one 
 fixed point in modern revolutionary historj', 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, mider poor cramped incipient forms, 
 is what all Pagan religions have struggled, as they 
 could, to set forth. I think Scandinavian 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 fa- 
 thers ; 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 hav^e tolerable 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 
 
22 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 wild land of barrenness 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 battle-field of 
 Frost and Fire ; — where of all placed we 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 dis- 
 covered by the Northmen ! The old Norse Poets were 
 many of them natives of Iceland. 
 
 Sseniund, one of the earl}"- Christian Priests there, 
 who perhaps had a lingering fondness for Paganism, 
 collected certain of their old Pagan songs, just about 
 becoming obsolete then, — Poems or Chants of a 
 mythic, prophetic, mostly all of a religious character : 
 that is what Norse critics call the Elder or Poetic 
 EddaP' Edda^ a word of uncertain etymology, is 
 thought to signify Ancestress. Snorro Sturleson,-^ an 
 
 ^ Glaciers. 
 
 2 Misnamed ^' Scemund's Edda," by its discoverer in Iceland, 
 1643. The collection was made by an unknown Icelander after 
 the death of Sjemund (1056-1133), the priest and scholar. The 
 name Edda (Art of Poetry) does not properly belong to this 
 book, though it does to Snorro's. 
 
 ^ A poet, historian, and grammarian (1178-1241). He com- 
 piled the Younger Edda as a manual of mythology and rules of 
 poetry for the use of young verse-makers. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 23 
 
 Iceland gentleman, an extremely notable personage, 
 educated by this Saemiind's grandson, took in hand 
 next, near a century afterwards, to put together, among 
 several other books he wrote, a kind of Prose Synopsis 
 of the whole Mythology ; elucidated by new fragments 
 of traditionary verse. A work constructed really with 
 great ingenuity, native talent, what one might call un- 
 conscious art ; altogether a perspicuous clear work, 
 pleasant reading still : this is the Younger or Prose 
 Edda. By these and the numerous other Sagas, 
 mostly Icelandic, with the commentaries, Icelandic or 
 not, which go on zealously in the North to this day, it 
 is possible to gain some direct insight even yet ; and 
 see that old Norse system of Belief, as it were, face 
 to face. Let us forget that it is erroneous Religion ; 
 let us look at it as old Thought, and try if we cannot 
 sympathise with it somewhat. 
 
 The primary characteristic of this old Northland 
 Mythology I find to be Impersonation of the visible 
 workings of Nature. Earnest simple recognition of 
 the workings of Physical Nature, as a thing wholly 
 miraculous, stupendous and divine. What we now 
 lecture of as Science, they wondered at, and fell down 
 in awe before, as Religion. The dark hostile Powers 
 of Nature they figure to themselves as ''Jotuns,' ^ 
 Giants, huge shaggy beings of a demonic character. 
 Frost, Fire, Sea-tempest ; these are Jotuns. The 
 friendly Powers again, as Summer-heat, the Sun, are 
 Gods. The empire of this Universe is divided between 
 these two ; they dwell apart, in perennial internecine 
 feud. The Gods dwell above in Asgard, the Garden 
 ^ Prou. Yotun (ci = u iu fur). 
 
24 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 of the Asen, or Divinities ; Jotunheim, a distant dark 
 chaotic land, is the home of the JiJtuns. 
 
 Curious all this ; and not idle or inane, if we will 
 look at the foundation of it ! The power of Fire, or 
 Flame, for instance, which we designate by some triv- 
 ial chemical name, thereb}^ hiding from ourselves the 
 essential character of wonder that dwells in it as 
 in all things, is with these old Northmen, Loke,^ a 
 most swift subtle Demon, of the brood of the Jotuns. 
 The savages of the Ladrones ^ Islands too (say, some 
 Spanish voyagers) thought Fire, which they never 
 had seen before, was a devil or god, that bit you 
 sharply when you touched it, and that lived upon dry ' 
 wood. From us too no Chemistry, if it had not Stu- 
 pidity to help it, would hide that Flame is a wonder. 
 What is Flame? — Frost the old Norse Seer discerns 
 to be a monstrous hoary Jotun, the Giant Thrym, 
 Hnjm ; or Rime, the old word now ueai'ly obsolete 
 here, but still used in Scotland to signify hoar-frost. 
 Rime was not then as now a dead chemical thing, ^ 
 but a living Jotun or Devil ; the monstrous Jotun 
 Rime di^ove home his Horses at night, sat 'combing 
 their manes,' — which Horses were Hail-Clouds, or 
 fleet Frost-Winds. His Cows — No, not his, but a 
 kinsman's, the Giant Hymir's Cows are Icebergs : 
 this Hyniir ' looks at the rocks ' with his devil-eye, 
 and they split in the glance of it. 
 
 Thunder was not then mere Electricity, vitreous 
 or resinous ; it was the God Donner (Thunder) or 
 
 ^ The devil, par excellence, of the Norse mythology. See later 
 notes. He was adopted by the gods, and became the foster-bro- 
 ther of Odin. ^ In the Pacific, discovered by Magellan, 1521. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 25 
 
 Tlior,^ — God also of beneficent Summer-heat. The 
 tliimJer was his wrath ; the g-athering of the black 
 clouds is the drawing-down of Thor's angi-y brows ; 
 the fire-bolt bursting out of Heaven is the all-rending 
 Hammer flung from the hand of Thor : he urges his 
 loud chariot over the mountain-tops, — that is the 
 peal; wrathful he 'blows in his red beard,' — that 
 is the rustlinfj stormblast before the thunder bejjin. 
 Balder 2 again, the White God, the beautiful, the just 
 and benignant (whom the early Christian Mission- 
 aries found to resemble Christ), is the Sun, — beau- 
 tifulest of visible things ; wondrous too, and divine 
 still, after all our Astronomies and Almanacs ! But 
 perhaps the notablest god we hear tell-of is one of 
 whom Grimm tjie German Et}anologist finds trace : 
 the God Wiinsck, or Wish. The God Wish ; who 
 could give us all that we icished ! Is not this the sin- 
 cerest 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 cultui-e. 
 Higher considerations have to teach us that the God 
 Wish is not the true God. 
 
 Of the other Gods or Jotuns I will mention only 
 for etymology's sake, that Sea-tempest is the Jotun 
 Aegir, a very dangerous Jotun ; — and now to this 
 day, on our river Trent, as I learn, the Nottingham 
 bargemen, when the River is in a certain flooded state 
 (a kind of backwater, or eddying swirl it has, very 
 dangerous to them), call it Eager ;^ they cry -out, 
 
 1 The son of Odin. Tlaursday = Thor's day. 
 
 2 See p. 48, n. 1. 
 
 ' The etymology of eager (tidal wave) is uncertain; it is not 
 
26 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 " Have a care, there is the Eager coming ! " Curious ; 
 that word surviving, like the peak of a submerged 
 world ! The oldest Nottingham bargemen had believed 
 in the God Aegir. Indeed our Eno-lish blood too in 
 good part is Danish, Norse ; or rather, at bottom, 
 Danish and Norse and Saxon have no distinction, ex- 
 cept 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 in- 
 vasions there were : and this, of course, in a greater 
 proportion along the east coast ; and greatest of all, 
 as I find, in the North Country. From the Hmnber 
 upwards, all over Scotland, the Speech of the com- 
 mon people is stiU in a singular degree Icelandic ; its 
 Germanism has still a peculiar Norse tinge. They too 
 are ' Normans,' Noi'thmen, — if that be any great 
 beauty ! — 
 
 Of the chief god, Odin, we shall speak by and by. 
 Mark at present so much ; what the essence of Scan- 
 dinavian and indeed of all Paganism is : a recognition 
 of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, per- 
 sonal Agencies, — as Gods and Demons. Not incon- 
 ceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man ojDcn- 
 ing itseK, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous 
 Universe. To me there is in the Norse System some- 
 thing very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad 
 simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light 
 gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes 
 this Scandinavian System. It is Thought ; the genuine 
 Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened 
 
 from the name of the sea god. See New Eng. Diet. Aegir is the 
 wealthiest of the giauts. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 27 
 
 to the things about them ; a face-to-face and heart-to- 
 heart inspection of the things, — the first characteristic 
 of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful light- 
 ness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism ; a certain 
 homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude 
 sincerity, discloses itself here. It is strange, after our 
 beautiful Apollo statues and clear smiling mytlmses, to 
 come do\vn upon the Norse Gods 'brewing ale ' to hold 
 their feast with Aegir, the Sea-Jotun ; sending out 
 Thor to get the caldron for them in the Jotun country ; 
 Thor, after many adventures, clapping 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 ! 
 A kind of vacant hugeness, large awkward gianthood, 
 characterises that Norse System ; enormous force, as 
 yet altogether untutored, stalking helpless with large 
 uncertain strides. Consider only their primary my thus 
 of the Creation. The Gods, having got the Giant 
 Ymer slain, a Giant 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 flesh was the > Land, the 
 Rocks his bones ; of his eyebrows 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-Brobdingnagian ^ business ! 
 Untamed Thought, great, giantlike, enormous ; — to be 
 tamed in due time into the compact greatness, not 
 
 ^ Alluding to the land of Brobdingnag, peopled by giants, 
 in Gulliver's Travels (1726), by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745). 
 During Gulliver's stay in Brobdingnag he was cared for by 
 Glumdalclitch, his "little nurse," a child of nine years, "not 
 above forty feet high, being little for her age." 
 
28 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 giantlike, but godlike and stronger tlian gianthood, of 
 the 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-ti^ee of Existence, has its roots deep- 
 down in the kingdoms of Hela or Death ; its truidc 
 reaches up heaven -high, spreads its boughs over the 
 whole Universe : it is the Tree of Existence. At the 
 foot of it, in the Death-kingdom, sit three Nomas, 
 Fates, — the Past, Present, Future ; watering its roots 
 from the Sacred Well.^ Its ' boughs,' with their bud- 
 dings and disleafings, — events, things suffered, things 
 done, catastrophes, — stretch through all lands and 
 times. Is not every leaf of it a biography, every fibre 
 there an act or word ? Its boughs are Histories of Na- 
 tions. The rustle of it is the noise of Hiunan Existence, 
 onwards from of old. It grows there, the breath of 
 Human Passion rustling through it ; — or storm tost,, 
 the stormwind howling through it like the voice of all 
 the gods. It is Igdrasil, the Tree of Existence. It is 
 the past, the present, and the future ; what was done, 
 what is doing, what will be done ; ' the infinite con- 
 jugation of the verb To do.^ Considering how hu- 
 man things circulate, each inextricably in communion 
 with all, — how the word I speak to you today is bor- 
 rowed, not from Ulfila^ the Moesogoth only, but from 
 
 ^ The fountain of wisdom, presided over by Mimer, the wisest 
 of the giants. In the dawn of time Odin pawned one of his eyes 
 for a drink from this well. 
 
 2 Born c. 310 ; Bisliop of the Goths (341), for whom he trans- 
 lated the Bible into Gothic ; removed (348) to Mcesia, south of 
 tlie Danube : died e. 380. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 29 
 
 all men since the first man began to speak, — I find no 
 similitude so true as this of a Tree. Beautiful ; alto- 
 gether beautiful and great. The ' Machine of the Uni- 
 verse,' 1 — 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 Na- 
 ture. Whence it specially came, one would not like to 
 be compelled to say very minutely ! One thing we may 
 say : It came from the thoughts of Norse men ; — 
 from the thought, above all, of iha first Norse man who 
 had an original power of thinking. The First Norse 
 ' man of genius,' as we should call him ! Innumerable 
 men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb 
 vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel ; or 
 with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as 
 men only feel ; — till the great Thinker came, the ori- 
 ginal man, the Seer ; whose shaped spoken Thought 
 awakes the 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 aU start up, as from 
 painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought ; answer- 
 ing to it, Yes, even so ! Joyful to men as the dawn- 
 ing of day from night ; — is it not, indeed, the awak- 
 ening for them from no-being into being, from death 
 into life ? We still honour such a man ; call him Poet, 
 Genius, and so forth : but to these wild men he was 
 a very magician, a worker of» miraculous unexpected 
 blessing for them ; a Prophet, a God ! — Thought once 
 awakened does not again slumber ; unfolds itself into 
 1 See pp. 104, 238. 
 
30 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 a System of Thought ; grows, in man after man, 
 generation after generation, - — till its full stature is 
 reached, and such System of Thought can grow no 
 farther, but must gire place to another. 
 
 For the Norse people, the Man now named Odin, 
 and Chief Norse God, we fancy, was such a man. A 
 Teacher, and Captain of soul and of body ; a Hero, 
 of worth z/;aneasurable ; admiration for whom, tran- 
 scending the known bounds, became adoration.^ Has 
 he not the power of articulate Thinking ; and many 
 other powers, as yet miraculous? So, with boundless 
 gratitude, would the rude Norse heart feel. Has he 
 not solved for them the sphinx-enigma of this Uni- 
 verse ; given assurance to them of their own destiny 
 there? By him they know now what they have to do 
 here, what to look for hereafter. Existence has be- 
 come articulate, melodious by him ; he first has made 
 Life alive ! — We may call this Odin, the origin of 
 Norse Mythology: Odin, or whatever name the First 
 Norse Thinker bore while he was a man among men. 
 His view of the Universe once promulgated, a like 
 view starts into being in all minds ; grows, keeps 
 ever growing, while it continues credible there. In all 
 minds it lay written, but invisibly, as in sympathetic 
 ink ; at his word it starts into visibility in all. Nay, 
 in every epoch of the world, the great event, parent 
 of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the 
 world ? — 
 
 One other thing we nUist not forget : it will explain, 
 a little, the confusion of these Norse Eddas. They are 
 not one coherent System of Thought : but properly the 
 ^ See p. 12, end. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 31 
 
 summation of several successive systems. All this of 
 the old Norse Belief which is fluug-out for us, in one 
 level of distance in the Edda, like a picture painted 
 on the same canvas, does not at all stand so in the 
 reality. It stands rather at all manner of distances 
 and depths, of successive generations since the Belief 
 first began. All Scandinavian thinkers, since the first 
 of them, contributed to that Scandinavian System of 
 ■ Thoiight ; 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 fidl final 
 shape we see it under in the Edda, no man will now 
 ever know : its Councils of Trebisond,i Councils of 
 Trent,2 Athanasiuses,^ Dantes, Luthers, are sunk with- 
 out echo in the dark night ! Only that it had such a 
 history we can all know. Wheresoever a thinker ap- 
 peared, there in the thing he thought-of was a contri- 
 bution, accession, a change or revolution made. Alas, 
 the grandest ' revolution ' of all, the ome made by the 
 man Odin himself, is not this too sunk for us like the 
 rest ! Of Odin what history ? Strange rather to re- 
 flect that he hud a history ! That this Odin, in his 
 
 * On southeast coast of the Black Sea, the Trapesus of Xeno- 
 phon's Ten Thousand. History does not record any Council of 
 Trehisond. 
 
 2 The nineteenth Ecumenical (General) Council of the Church, 
 held at Trent, in the Austrian Tyrol, 1545-1563. It settled some 
 important matters of theological doctrine and church reform. 
 See p. 172, n. 1. 
 
 ^ One of the most celebrated Greek Fathers of the Church 
 (c. 296-373), Bishop of Alexandria. In constant conflict with 
 various factions in the Church, he was deposed and restored sev- 
 eral times. 
 
32 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 ; — intrin- 
 sically all one as we : and did such a work ! But the 
 work, much of it, has perished ; the worker, all to the 
 name. " WednesA^y " men will say tomorrow ; Odin's 
 day I Of Odin there exists no history ; no document 
 of it ; no guess about it worth repeating. 
 
 Snorro indeed, in the quietest manner, almost in a 
 brief business style, writes down in his Tlcimshringla^ 
 how Odin was a heroic Prince, in the Black-Sea re- 
 gion, with Twelve Peers, and a great people straitened 
 for room. How he led these Asen^ (Asiatics) of his 
 out of Asia ; settled them in the North parts of Europe, 
 by warlike conquest ; invented Letters, Poetry and so 
 forth, — and came by and by to be worshipped as Chief 
 God by these Scandinavians, his Twelve Peers made 
 into Twelve Sons of his own, Gods like himself : Snorro 
 has no doubt of this. Saxo Grammaticus,^ a very curi- 
 ous Northman of that same century, is still more unhes- 
 itating; scruples not to find out a historical fact in 
 every individual mythus, and writes it (\o\vYt. as a terres- 
 trial event in Denmark or elsewhere. Torfa;us,* learned 
 and cautious, some centuries later, assigns by calcu- 
 
 1 Snorro's Saga or Story of the Kings of Norway to 1177, 
 called Heimskringla, from its opening words. 
 
 2 See pp. 23, 24. 
 
 ' Died soon after 1200. lie ^v^ote a Danish History, Ge/tta 
 Danorum, to the year 1186. The first eight books present the 
 stories of Norse divinities as of kings and heroes of antiquity. 
 See p. 50. 
 
 * Born in Iceland, 1636. A scholarly antiquary, historian, and 
 collector of the saga manuscripts. Died 1719. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 33 
 
 latioi a date for it : OJin, be says, came into Europe 
 about tbe Year 70 before Cbrist. Of all wbicb, as 
 grounded on mere uncertainties, found to be untenable 
 now, I need say nothing. Far, very far beyond the 
 Year 70 ! Odin's date, adventures, whole terrestrial 
 history, figure and environment are sunk from us for 
 ever into unknown thousands of years. 
 
 . Nay Grimm,^ the German Antiquary, goes so far as 
 to deny that any man Odin ever existed. He proves 
 it by etymology. The word Wuotan, which is the ori- 
 ginal form of Odin, a word spread, as name of their 
 chief Divinity, over all the Teutonic Nations every- 
 where ; this word, which connects itself, according to 
 Grimm, with the Latin t^adere, with the English loade 
 and suchlike, — means primarily Movement, Source 
 of Movement, Power ; and is the fit name of the high- 
 est god, not of any man. The word signifies Divinity, 
 he says, among the old Saxon, German and all Teu- 
 tonic Nations ; the adjectives formed from it all signify 
 divine, supreme, or something pertaining to the chief 
 god. Like enough ! We must bow to Grimm in mat- 
 ters etymological. Let us consider it fixed that Wvo- 
 tan means Wading, force of Movement. And now 
 still, what hinders it from being the name of a Heroic 
 Man and Mover, as well as of a god? As for the ad- 
 jectives, and words formed' from it, — did not the 
 Spaniards in their universal admiration for Lope,^ get 
 
 1 Jakob Grimm (1785-1863), one of the Grimm brothers of 
 fairy-tale fame. Carlyle cites here from his Teutonic Mythology 
 (1882), i, 131. • 
 
 2 Lope de Vega (1562-1635), Spanisli dramatist, author of 
 about eighteen hundred plays, besides poems, romances, and 
 shorter dramatic pieces. 
 
34 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 into the habit of saying 'a Lope flower,' 'a Lope dcnna,^ 
 if the flower or woman were of surpassing beauty? 
 Had this lasted, Lope would have grown, in Spain, to 
 be an adjective signifying godlike also. Indeed, Adam 
 Smith,^ in his Essay on Language^ surmises that all 
 adjectives whatsoever were formed precisely in that 
 way : some very green thing, chiefly notable for its 
 greenness, got the appellative 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 ! 
 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 god^ 
 the chief god ? — that surely is a question which no- 
 body would wish to dogmatise upon. I have said, 
 his people knew no limits to their admiration of 
 him ; they had as yet no scale to measure admiration 
 by. Fancy your own generous heart' s-love of some 
 greatest man expanding till it transcended all bounds, 
 till it filled and overflowed the whole field of your 
 thought ! Or what if this man Odin, — since a great 
 deep soul, with the afflatus and mysterious tide of 
 
 ^ Scotch economist and philosopher (1723-1790), best known 
 by his Wealth of Nations (177C). 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 35 
 
 vision and impulse rushing on him he knows not 
 whence, is ever an enigma, a kind of terror and 
 wonder to himself, — should have felt that perhaps he 
 was divine ; that he was some effluence of the ' Wuo- 
 tan,' ' Movement,'' Supreme Power and Divinity, of 
 whom to his rapt vision all Natvire was the awful 
 Flame-image ; that some effluence of Wnotan dwelt 
 here in him ! He was not necessarily false ; he was 
 but mistaken, speaking the truest he knew. A great 
 sold, any sincere soul, knows not ichat he is, — alter- 
 nates between the highest height and the lowest 
 depth ; can, of all things, the least measure — Him- 
 self ! What others take him for, and what he guesses 
 that he may be ; these two items strangely act on one 
 another, help to determine one another. With all 
 men reverently admiring him ; with his own wild soul 
 fuU of noble ardours and affections, of whirlwind 
 chaotic darkness and glorious new light ; a divine 
 Universe bursting all into godlike beauty round him, 
 and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what 
 covdd he think himself to be? "Wuotan?" All 
 men answered, " Wuotan ! " — 
 
 And then consider what mere Time will do in such 
 cases ; how if a man was great while living, he be- 
 comes tenfold greater when dead. What an enormous 
 camera-ohscura ^ magnifier is Tradition ! How a thing 
 grows in the human Memory, in the human Imagina- 
 
 ^ " Dark chamber," whether a room or a box, into wliich a small 
 opening, usually provided with a lens, admits light, wliich 
 strikes upon a screen opposite, forming an image of tlie exter- 
 nal objects in range of the opening. The picture formed on the 
 ground glass of an ordinary photographic camera is a camera- 
 ohscura image. 
 
£6 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 tion, 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 great 
 man would grow mythic^ the contemporaries who had 
 seen him, being once all dead. And in three-hundred 
 years, and in three-thousand years — I — To attempt 
 thaorisincj on such matters would profit little: they 
 are matters which refuse to be tlieoremed and dia- 
 gramed ; which Logic ought to know that she cannot 
 speak of. Enough for us to discern, far in the utter- 
 most distance, some gleam as of a small real light shin- 
 injr 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 me the centre of the whole. How such light 
 will then shine out, and with wondrous thousandfold 
 expansion spread itself, in forms and colours, depends 
 not on it^ so much as on the National Mind recipient 
 of it. The colours and forms of j^our 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 mod- 
 elled by the nature of the man ! I said. The earnest 
 man, speaking to his brother men, must always have 
 
 1 The Earl of Arundel and Surrey (1586-1646) made the 
 collection of marbles called by his name, afterward presented 
 to Oxford University, of which the most noted is the Parian 
 Chronicle, a chronology of the chief events of Greek history 
 from 1582 to 264 B. c. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 37 
 
 stated what seemed to him a fact^ a real Appearance 
 of Nature. But the way in which such Appearance or 
 fact shaped itself, — what sort of fact it became for 
 him, — was and is modified by his own laws of think- 
 ing ; deep, subtle, but universal, ever-operating laws. 
 The world of Nature, for every man, is the Fantasy of 
 Himself ; this world is the multiplex ' Image of his own 
 Dream.' Who knows to what uunameable subtleties 
 of spiritual law all these Pagan Fables owe their 
 shape ! The number Twelve, 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 nmnber of 
 Odin's Sons, and innumerable other Twelves. Any 
 vague rumour of number had a tendency to settle itseK 
 into Twelve. So with regard to every other matter. 
 And quite unconsciously too, — with no notion of 
 building-up ' Allegories ' ! But the fresh clear glance 
 of those First Ages would be prompt in discerning the 
 secret relations of things, and wholly open to obey 
 these. SchiUer 1 finds in the Cestus'^ of Venus an ever- 
 lasting aesthetic truth as to the nature of all Beauty ; 
 curious: — but he is carefid n<^ to insinuate that the 
 old Greek Mytliists had any notion of lecturing about 
 
 the ' Philosophy of Criticism ' ! On the whole, 
 
 we must leave those boimdless regions. Cannot we 
 conceive that Odin was a reality ? Error indeed, 
 error enough : but sheer falsehood, idle fables, allegory 
 afoi-ethought, — we will not believe that our Fathers 
 believed in these. 
 
 ^ German poet and dramatist (1759-1805); friend of Goethe. 
 ^ Girdle, embroidered with various enticements to love. 
 
38 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Odin's Runes are a significant feature of him. 
 Runes, and the miracles of ' magic ' he worked by 
 them, make a great feature in tradition. Kunes are 
 the Scandinavian Alphabet ; suppose Odin to have 
 been the inventor of Letters, as well as ' magic,' among 
 that people ! It is the greatest invention man has ever 
 made, this of marking-down the unseen thought that 
 is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second 
 speech, almost as miraculous as the first. You remem- 
 ber the astonishment and incredulity of Atahualjia^ 
 the Peruvian King ; how he made the Spanish Soldier 
 who was guarding him scratch Dios on his thumb-nail, 
 that he might try the next soldier with it, to ascertain 
 whether such a miracle was possible. If Odin brought 
 Letters among his people, he might work magic enough ! 
 
 Writing by liunes has some air of being original 
 among the Norsemen : not a Phoenician ^ Alphabet, 
 but a native Scandinavian one. Suorro tells us farther 
 that Odin invented Poetry ; the music of human 
 speech, as well as that miraculous runic marking of it. 
 Transport yourselves into the early childhood of na- 
 tions ; the first beautiful morning-light of our Eui'ope, 
 when all yet lay in fresh young radiance as of a great 
 
 ^ The earliest Germanic letters. O. E. ran = secret, mystery. 
 The runic alphabet was called " f uthark," from the first six letters. 
 J^ h l> f^ k < . Tlie Elder Edda tells that Odin hung nine whole 
 f u til a r k nights on the wind-rocked tree Igdrasil, and 
 sacrificed himself to himself. While hanging there he discovered 
 the runes. 
 
 ^ Treacherously executed by Pizarro, 1533. 
 
 •^ The alphabet of the Phcenicians, ancient inhabitants of the 
 eastern coast of the Mediterranean, dates from as far back as 
 1000 B. 0. It is the ancestor of the Greek, Roman, and moderu 
 European alphabets. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 39 
 
 sunrise, and. our Europe was first beginning to think, 
 to be ! Wonder, hope ; infinite radiance of hope and 
 wonder, as of a young" child's thoughts, in the hearts 
 of these strong men ! Strong sons of Nature ; and here 
 was not only a wild Captain and Fighter ; discerning 
 with his wild flashing eyes what to do, with his wild 
 lion-heart daring and doing it ; but a Poet too, all that 
 we mean by a Poet, Prophet, great devout Thinker 
 and Inventor, — as the truly Great Man ever is. A 
 Hero is a Hero at all points ; in the soul and thought 
 of him first of all. This Odin, in his rude semi-articu- 
 late 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, first awakened into thinking, have made of 
 him! To them, as yet without names for it, he was 
 noble and noblest ; Hero, Prophet, God ; Wuotan^ the 
 greatest of all. Thought is Thought, however it speak 
 or spell itself. Intrinsically, I conjecture, this Odin 
 must have been of the same sort of stuff as the great- 
 est kind of men. A great thought in the wild deep 
 heart of him I 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. 
 But he was as a light kindled in it ; a light of Intel- 
 lect, 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. 
 
40 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 We will fancy liim to be the Tj-jie Norseman ; the 
 finest Teuton whom that race had yet produced. The 
 rude Norse heart burst-up into boundless admiration 
 round him ; into adoration. He is as a root of so 
 many great things ; the fruit of him is found grow- 
 ing, from deep thousands of years, over the whole field 
 of Teutonic Life. Our own Wednesday, as I said, is 
 it not still Odin's Day ? Wednesbury, Wansborough, 
 Wanstead, Wandsworth : Odin grew into England 
 too, these are still leaves from that root ! He was the 
 Chief God to all the Teutonic People ; their Pattei-n 
 Norseman ; — in such way did thcu admire their Pat- 
 tern Norseman ; that was the fortune he had in the 
 world. 
 
 Thus if the man Odin himself have vanished utterly, 
 there is this huge Shadow of him which still projects 
 itself over the whole History of his People. For this 
 Odin once admitted to be God, we can 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 altogetlier differ- 
 ently, and gi'ow thenceforth in a new manner. What 
 this Odin saw into, and taught with his runes and his 
 rhymes, the whole Teutonic People laid to heart and 
 carried forward. His way of thought became their 
 way of thought : — such, under new conditions, is the 
 history of every great thinker still. In gigantic con- 
 fused lineaments, like some enormous camera-obscura 
 shadow thrown upward from the dead deeps of the 
 Past, and covering the whole Northern Heaven, is 
 not that Scandinavian Mythology in some sort the 
 Portraiture of this man Odin ? The gigantic image of 
 
; THE HERO AS DIVINITY 41 
 
 [is natural face, legible or not legible there, expanded 
 l.nd confused in that manner ! Ah, Thought, I say, is 
 ilways Thought. No great man lives in vain. The 
 History of the world is but the Biography of great 
 Itien. 
 
 To me there is something very touching in this 
 n-imeval figure of Heroism ; in such artless, helpless, 
 tut hearty entire reception of a Hero by his fellow-men. 
 ■fever so helpless in shape, it is the noblest of feelings, 
 :.nd a feeling in some shape or other perennial as man 
 iimself. If I could show in any measure, what I feel 
 ieeply for a long time now. That it is the vital ele- 
 nent of manhood, the soul of man's history here in 
 i»ur world, — it would be the chief use of this discours- 
 "iig at present. We do not now call our great men 
 ijods, nor admire without limit : ah no, loith limit 
 enough ! But if we have no great men, or do not 
 tdmire at all, — that were a still worse case. 
 
 This poor Scandinavian Hero-worship, that whole 
 *forse way of looking at the Universe, and adjusting 
 imeself there, has an indestructi'ole merit for us. A 
 ude childlike way of recognising the divineuess of Na- 
 me, the divineuess of jMan : must rude, yet heartfelt, 
 obust, giantlike ; betokening what a giant of a man 
 his child would yet grow to! — It was a truth, and 
 'S none. Is it not as the half-dumb stifled voice of the 
 ong-buried generations of our own Fathers, calling out 
 )f the depths of ages to us, in whose veins their blood 
 ;till runs : " This then, this is what v:e made of the 
 vorld : this is all the image and notion we could form 
 }o ourselves of this great mystery of a Life and Uni- 
 verse. Despise it not. You are raised liigh above it. 
 
42 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 to large free scope of \dsion : but you too are not yet 
 at the top. No, your notion too, so uiucli enlarged, is 
 but a partial, imperfect one ; that matttir is a thing no 
 man will ever, in time or out of timi;, comprehend ; 
 after thousands of years of ever-new expansion, man 
 will find himself but struggling to comprehend again 
 a part of it: the thing is larger than man, not to be 
 comprehended by him ; an Infinite thing ! " 
 
 The essence of the Scandinavian, as indeed of all 
 Pagan Mythologies, we found to be recognition of the 
 divineness of Nature ; sincere communion of man witlf 
 the mysterious invisible Powers visibly seen at work in 
 the world round him. This, I should say, is more sin- 
 cerely done in the Scandinavian than in any Mythol- 
 ogy I know. Sincerity is the great characteristic of it. 
 Superior sincerity (far superior) consoles us for the total 
 want of old Grecian grace. Sincerity, 1 think, is bet- 
 ter than grace. I feel' that these old Northmen were 
 looking into Nature with open eye and soul : most 
 earnest, honest ; childlike, and yet manlike ; with a 
 great-hearted simplicity and depth and freshness, in a 
 true, loving, admiring, unfearing way. A right valiant, 
 true old race of men. Such recognition of Nature owe 
 finds to be the chief element of Paganism : recognition 
 of Man, and his Moral Duty, though this too is not 
 wanting, comes to be the chief element only in purer 
 forms of religion. Here, indeed, is a great distinction 
 and epoch in Human Beliefs ; a great landmark in 
 the religious development of Mankind. Man first jiuts 
 himself in relation with Nature and her Powers, wonders 
 and worships over those ; not till a later epoch does he 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 43 
 
 discern tliat all Power is Moral, that the grand point 
 is the distinction for him of Good and Evil, of Thou 
 shalt and TJiou shall not. 
 
 With rejrard to all these fabulous delineations in 
 the Edda^i I will remark, moreover, as indeed was 
 already hinted, that most probably they must have 
 been of much newer date ; most probably, even from 
 the first, were comparatively idle for the old Norse- 
 men, and as it were a kind of Poetic sport. Allegory 
 and Poetic Delineation, as I said above, cannot be re- 
 ligious Faith ; the Faith itself must first be there, then 
 Allegory enough will gather round it, as the fit body 
 round its soul. The Norse Faith, I can well suppose, 
 like other Faiths, was most active while it lay mainly 
 in the silent state, and had not yet much to say about 
 itseK, still less to sing. 
 
 Among those shadowy Edda matters, amid all that 
 fantastic congeries of assertions, and traditions, in their 
 musical Mythologies, the main practical belief a man 
 could have was probably not much more than this : of 
 the Valkyrs ^ and the Hall of Odin ; of an inflexible 
 Destiny ; and that the one thing needful for a man 
 was to he brave. The Valkyrs are Choosers of the 
 Slain ; a Destiny inexorable, which it is useless trying 
 to bend or soften, has appointed who Is to be slain ; 
 this was a fundamental point for the Norse believer ; 
 — as indeed it Is for all earnest men everywhere, for 
 a Mahomet, a Luther, for a Napoleon too. It lies at 
 
 ^ These wildly beautiful maidens weave the web of battle. 
 They ride through the air, clad in brilliant armor. As the name 
 ("Choosers of the Slain") implies, they carry the brave war- 
 riors, slain in battle, to their reward in Valhalla, the Hall of the 
 Slain. See add. note to p. 47, n. 1. 
 
44 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 the basis this for every such man ; it is the woof out 
 of which his whole system of thought is woven. The 
 Valkyrs ; and then that these Choosers lead the brave 
 to a heavenly Hall of Odin ; only the base and slavish 
 being thrust elsewhither, into the reahns of Ilela 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 favor for them, but despise and thrust them out, 
 if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is 
 not something in this ! It is an everlasting duty, valid 
 in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. Valor 
 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 ker- 
 nel of it, is true to this hour. A man shall and must 
 be valiant ; he must march forward, and quit himself 
 like a man, — trusting imperturbably in the appoint- 
 ment and choice of the upper Powers ; and, on the 
 whole, not fear at all. Now and always, the complete- 
 ness of his victory over Fear will determine how much 
 of a man he is. 
 
 It is doubtless very savage that kind of valour of 
 the old Northmen. Snorro tells us they thought it a 
 shame and misery not to die in battle ; and if 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 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 45 
 
 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, I 
 say, than none. In the old Sea-kings, too, what an 
 indomitable rugged energy ! Silent, with closed lips, 
 as I fancy them, unconscious that they were specially 
 brave ; defying the wild ocean with its monsters, and 
 all men and things ; — progenitors of our own Blakes 
 and Nelsons ! No Homer sang these Norse Sea-kings ; 
 but Agamemnon's was a small audacity, and of small 
 fruit in the world, to some of them ; — to Hrolf 's of 
 Normandy, for instance ! Hrolf, or Kollo ^ Duke of 
 Normandy, the wild Sea-king, has a share in govern- 
 ing England at this hour. 
 
 Nor was it altogether nothing, even that wild sea- 
 roving and battling, through so many generations. It 
 needed to be ascertained which was the strongest kind 
 of men ; who were to be ruler over whom. Among the 
 Northland Sovereigns, too, I find some who got the 
 title Wood-cutter ; Forest-felling Kings. Much lies in 
 that. I suppose at bottom many of them were forest- 
 fellers as well as fighters, though the Skalds talk 
 mainly of the latter, — misleading certain critics not 
 a little ; for no nation of men could ever live by fight- 
 ing alone ; there could not produce enough come out 
 of that ! I suppose the right good fighter was oftenest 
 also the right good forest-feller, — the right good 
 improver, discerner, doer and worker in every kind ; 
 for true valour, different enough from ferocity, is thei 
 basis of all. A more legitimate kind of valour that ; 
 1 First Duke of Nonnandy (?860-?930). 
 
46 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 showing itself against the untamed Forests and dark 
 brute Powers of Nature, to conquer Nature for us. 
 In the same direction have not we their descendants 
 since carried it far ? May such valour last for ever 
 with us ! 
 
 That the man Odin, speaking with a Hero's voice 
 and heart, as with an impressiveuess out of Heaven, 
 told his People the infinite importance of Valour, how 
 man thereby became a god ; and that his People, feel- 
 ing a response to it in their own hearts, believed this 
 message of his, and thought it a message out of Hea- 
 ven, and him a Divinity for telling it them : this seems 
 to me the primary seed-grain of the Norse Religion, 
 from which all manner qi mythologies, symbolic prac- 
 tices, speculations, allegories, songs and sagas would 
 naturally grow. Grow, — how strangely ! I called it 
 a small light shining and shaping in the huge vortex 
 of Norse darkness. Yet the darkness itself was alive ; 
 consider that. It was the eager inarticulate uninstructed 
 Mind of the whole Norse People, longing only to be- 
 come articulate, to go on articulating ever farther ! The 
 living doctrine grows, grows ; — like a Banyan-tree ; 
 the first seed is the essential thing : any branch strikes 
 itself down into the earth, becomes a new root ; and so, 
 in endless complexity, we have a whole wood, a whole 
 jungle, one seed the parent of it all. Was not the 
 whole Norse Religion, accordingly, in some sense, what 
 we called ' the enormous shadow of this man's like- 
 ness ' ? Critics trace some affinity in some Norse my- 
 ♦ thuses, of the Creation and suchlike, with those of the 
 Hindoos. The Cow Adumbla,^ ' licking the rime from 
 ^ Interpreted as representing Chaos. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 47 
 
 the rocks,' has a kind of Hiiuloo look. A Hindoo Cow, 
 transported into frosty countries. Probably enough ; 
 indeed we may say undoubtedly, these things will have 
 a kindred with the remotest lands, with the earliest 
 times. Thought does not die, but only is changed. The 
 first man that began to think in this Planet of ours, he 
 was the beginner of all. And then the second man, 
 and the third man ; — nay, every true Thinker to 
 this hour is a kind of Odin, teaches men his way of 
 thought, spreads a shadow of his own likeness over 
 sections of the History of the World. 
 
 Of the distinctive poetic character or merit of this 
 Norse Mythology I have not room to speak ; nor does 
 it concern us much. Some wild Prophecies we have, 
 as the Voluspa in the Elder Edda ; of a rapt, ear- 
 nest, sibylline sort. But they were comparatively an 
 idle adjunct of the matter, men who as it were but 
 toyed with the matter, these later Skalds ; and it is 
 their songs chiefly that survive. In later centuries, I 
 suppose, they would go on singing, poetically symbol- 
 ising, as our modern Painters paint, when it was no 
 longer from the Innermost heart, or not from the heart 
 at all. This is everywhere to be well kept in mind. 
 
 Gray's fragments of Norse Lore,^ at any rate, will 
 give one no notion of it ; — any more than Pope will 
 of Homer. It • is no square-built gloomy palace of 
 black ashlar marble, shrouded in awe and horror, as 
 Gray gives it us : no ; rough as the North rocks, as 
 
 ^ The Fatal Sisterx and The Descent of O'/in, free rendering's of 
 Norse Odes, by Thomas Gray (1716-1771), the author of the 
 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. See add. note. 
 
48 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 the Iceland deserts, it in ; with a heartiness, homeli- 
 ness, even a tint of good humour and robust mirth in 
 the middle of these fearfid things. The strong old 
 Norse heart did not go upon theatrical sublimities ; 
 they had not time to tremble. I like much their ro- 
 bust simplicity ; their veracity, directness of concc})- 
 tion. Thor ' draws down his brows ' in a veritable 
 Norse rage ; ' grasps his hammer till tlie knuckles 
 grow white.'' Beautiful traits of pity too, an honest 
 pity. Balder ^ ' the white God ' dies ; the beautiful, 
 benignant ; 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, " Yes, Balder did pass 
 here ; but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, 
 far towards the North." Hermoder rides on ; leaps 
 Hell-gate, Hela's gate ; does see Balder, and speak 
 with him ; Ba.lder cannot be delivered. Inexorable ! 
 Hela will not, for Odin or any God, give him up. The 
 beautiful and gentle has to remain there. His Wife 
 had volunteered to go with him, to die with him. They 
 shall for ever remain there. He sends his ring to 
 
 ^ The second son of Odin and Frigga. His motlier obtained 
 an oath from all things except the n)istletoe, which was over- 
 looked as harmless, not to hurt Balder. Loke persuaded Balder's 
 blind brother to cast a sprig of mistletoe at Balder, whieli killed 
 him. Hela promised to let Balder return if all the world of be- 
 ings and things would mourn for him. But one giant-hag, after- 
 wards discovered to be Loke in disguise, refused. See Matthew 
 Arnold's Balder Dead. 
 
 " The swift messenger, servant of Odin. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 49 
 
 Odin ; Nanua bis wife sends lier thimble to Frig-ga, as 
 a remembrance. — Ab me ! — 
 
 For indeed Valour is tbe fountain of Pity too ; — of 
 Trutb, and all tbat is great and good in man. Tbe 
 robust bomely vigour of tbe Norse beart attacbes one 
 mucb, in tbese delineations. Is it not a trait of ri<rbt 
 honest strength, says Uhland,^ who has written a fine 
 Essay on Thor, tbat tbe old Norse beart finds its 
 friend in the Thunder-god ? Tbat it is not frightened 
 away by bis thunder ; but finds that Summer-heat, the 
 beautiful noble summer, must and will have thunder 
 withal ! The Norse beart loves this Thor and bis ham- 
 mer-bolt ; sports with him. Thor is Smnmer-heat ; tbe 
 god of Peaceable Industry as well as Thunder. He is 
 tbe Peasant's friend ; his true henchman and attendant 
 is Thialfi, Manual Labour. Thor bimseK engages in 
 all manner of rough manual work, scorns no business 
 for its plebeianism ; is ever and anon travellmg- to tbe 
 country of tbe Jotuns, harrying those chaotic Frost- 
 monsters, subduing them, at least straitening and dam- 
 aging them. There is a great broad humour in some of 
 tbese things. 
 
 Thor, as we saw above, goes to Jotun-land, to seek 
 Hymir's Caldron, that the Gods may brew beer. 
 Hymir tbe huge Giant enters, bis grey beard all full 
 of boar-frost ; splits pillars with the very glance of bis 
 eye ; Thor, after mucb rough tumult, snatches tbe Pot, 
 claps it on his bead ; the ' handles of it reach down to 
 bis heels.' The Norse Skald has a kind of loving sport 
 with Thor. This is the Hymir whose cattle, the critics 
 
 ^ Lyric poet, essayist, and scholar (1787-1862) ; Essay Ueber 
 den Mythus von Thor, 183G. 
 
50 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 have discovered, are Icebergs. Huge untutored Brob- 
 dingnag genius, — needing only to be tamed-down ; into 
 Shakspeares, Dantes, Goetlies ! It is all gone now, that 
 old Norse work, — Thor the Thunder-god changed 
 into Jack the Giant-killer: but the mind that made it 
 is here yet. How strangely things grow, and die, and 
 do not die ! There are twigs of that great world-tree of 
 Norse Belief still cm-iously traceable. This poor Jack 
 of the Nursery, with his miraculous shoes of swiftness, 
 coat of darkness, sword of sharpness, he is one. Hyndc. 
 Etin^ and still more decisively Red Etin of Ireland, 
 in the Scottish Ballads, these are both derived from 
 Norseland ; Etin ^ is evidently a Jbtun. Nay, Shaks- 
 peare's Hamlet is a twig too of this same world-tree ; 
 there seems no doubt of that. Hamlet, Amleth, I find, 
 is really a mythic personage ; and his Tragedy, of the 
 poisoned Father, poisoned asleep by drops in his ear, 
 and the rest, is a Norse mythus ! Old Saxo, as his 
 wont was, made it a Danish history ; Shakspeare, out 
 of Saxo, made it what we see. That is a twig of the 
 world-tree that has grown, I think ; — by nature or 
 accident that one has grown ! 
 
 In fact, these old Norse songs have a truth in them, 
 an inward perennial truth and greatness, — as, indeed, 
 all must have that can very long preserve itself by 
 tradition alone. It is a greatness not of mere body 
 and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There 
 is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in 
 these old hearts. A great free glance into the very 
 deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave 
 
 1 Or elen = giant, dropped out of use in English speech in the 
 seventeenth century. See New Eng. Diet. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 51 
 
 old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all 
 ages, That this world is after all but a show, — a 
 phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep 
 souls see into that, — the Hindoo Mythologist, the 
 German Philosopher, — the 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 Outer 
 Garden, central seat of Jotun-land), is remarkable in 
 this respect. Thialfi was with him, and Loke. After 
 various adventures, they entered upon Giant-land; 
 wandered over plains, wild uncultivated places, among 
 stones and trees. At nightfall they noticed a house ; 
 and as the door, which indeed formed one whole side 
 of the house, was open, they entered. It was a simple 
 habitation ; one large hall, altogether empty. They 
 stayed there. Suddenly in the dead of the night loud 
 noises alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer ; stood 
 in the door, prepared for fight. His companions within 
 ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some 
 outlet in that rude hall ; they found a little closet at 
 last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor any 
 battle : for, lo, in the morning it turned-out that the 
 noise had been only the snoring of a certain enormous 
 but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peace- 
 ably sleeping near by ; and this that they took for a house 
 was merely his Glove^ thrown aside there ; the door 
 was the Glove- wrist ; the little closet they had fled 
 into was the Thumb ! Such a glove ; — I remark too 
 that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a thumb, 
 and the rest undivided : a most ancient, rustic glove ! 
 ^ Carlyle's favorite quotation. See p. 156. 
 
52 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day ; 
 Tbor, however, had liis a^\ii suspicions, did not like the 
 ways of Skrymir ; determined at night to jjut an end 
 to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck 
 down into the Giant's face a right thunderbolt blow, 
 of force to rend rocks. The Giant merely awoke ; 
 rubbed his cheek, and said. Did a leaf fall? Again 
 Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept ; a better 
 blow than before ; but the Giant only murmured. 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 tlie gate of Utgard, a place so 
 high that you had to ' strain your neck bending back 
 to see the top of it,' Skrymir went his ways. Thor 
 and his companions were admitted ; invited to 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 Cat he saw there ? Small as the feat 
 seemed, Thor with his whole godlike strength could 
 not ; he bent-up the creature's back, could not raise 
 its feet off the ground, could at the utmost raise one 
 foot. Why, you are no man, said the Utgard people ; 
 there is an Old Woman that will wrestle you ! Thor, 
 heartily ashamed, seized this haggard Old Woman ; 
 but could not throw her. 
 
 And now, on their quitting Utgard, the chief Jotun, 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 53 
 
 escorting them politely a little way, said to Thor : 
 -' You are beaten then : — yet be not so much ashamed ; 
 there was deception of appearance in it. That Horn 
 you tried to drink was the Sea ; you did make it ebb ; 
 but who can drink that, the bottondess ! The Cat you 
 woidd have lifted, — why, that is the Midgard-snake^ 
 the Great World-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds 
 and keeps-up the whole created world ; had you torn 
 that up, the world must have rushed to ruin ! As for 
 the Old Woman, she was Time^ Old Age, 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 three 
 valleys ; your three strokes made these ! " Thor looked 
 at his attendant Jotun : it was Skrymir ; — it was, say 
 Norse critics, the old chaotic rocky Earth in person, 
 and that glove-Aoz^se was some Eartli-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 mock- 
 ing : " Better come no more to Jotunheira ! " — 
 
 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 Norse gold in it ? 
 More true metal, rough from the Mimer-stithy,^ than 
 in many a famed Greek Mythus ahaqyed far better ! A 
 great broad Bx'obdingnag grin of true humour is in 
 this Ski-ymir ; mirth resting on eai'nestness and sad- 
 ness, as the rainbow on black tempest : only a right 
 valiant heart is capable of that. It is the grim hiunour 
 
 ^ According to the Prose Edda, one of the offspring of Loke. 
 ^ Forged by old Norse wisdom. See p. 28, n. 1. 
 
54 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 of our own Ben Jonson,^ rare old Ben ; runs in tlie 
 blood of us, I fancy ; for one catches tones of it, 
 under a still other shape, out of the American Back- 
 woods. 
 
 That is also a very striking conception that of the 
 Rar/naroJc^^ Consummation, or Twilight of the Gods. 
 It is in the Voluspa Song ; seemingly a very old, pro- 
 phetic idea. The Gods and Jotuns, the divine Powers 
 and the chaotic brute ones, after long contest and 
 partial victory by the former, meet at last in univer- 
 sal world-embracing wrestle and duel ; World-serpent 
 against Thor, strength against strength ; mutually 
 extinctive ; and ruin, ' twilight,' sinking into darkness, 
 swallows the created Universe. The old Universe with 
 its Gods is sunk ; but it is not final death : there is to 
 be a new Heaven and a new Earth ; a higher supreme 
 God,3 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 ear- 
 nest Thinkers in their rude style ; and how, though all 
 dies, and even gods die, yet all death is but a phoenix ^ 
 
 ^ The most famous of the dramatists contemporary with 
 Shakespeare (1574—1637). " O rare Ben Johnson " (s!c) is in- 
 scribed on his tombstone in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 ^ After the deatli of Balder the gods are on the losing side. 
 Loke puts off all pretence of virtue, and becomes the leader of 
 the hosts of Hela in the final battle. Thor slays the World-ser- 
 pent, but is suffocated by the fumes of its poison. 
 
 2 The gods of the old mythology were not morally without spot; 
 in knowledge they were surpassed by the giants, who antedated 
 them. After the Ragnarok the gods that arose were to be sin- 
 less. 
 
 * The Phoenix myth appears in Eastern mythology in various 
 forms. According to the most familiar version, alluded to here, the 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY 55 
 
 fire-death, and new-birth into the Greater and the 
 Better ! It is the fundamental Law o£ Being for a 
 creature made of Time, living in this Place of Hope. 
 All earnest men have seen into it ; may still see 
 into it. 
 
 And now, connected with this, let us glance at the 
 last mythus of the appearance of Thor ; and end there. 
 I fancy it to be the latest in date of all these fables ; 
 a sorrowing protest against the advance of Christian- 
 ity, — set forth reproachfully by some Conservative 
 Pagan. King Olaf ^ has been harshly blamed for his 
 over-zeal in introducing Christianity ; surely I should 
 have blamed him far more for an under-zeal in that ! 
 He paid dear enough for it ; he died by the revolt of 
 his Pagan people, in battle, in the year 1033, at Stick- 
 elstad, near that Drontheim, where the chief Cathedral 
 of the North has now stood for many centuries, dedi- 
 cated gratefully to his memory as Saint Olaf. The 
 mythus about Thor is to this effect. King Olaf, the 
 Christian Reform King, is sailing with fit escort along 
 the shore of Norway, from haven to haven ; dispensing- 
 justice, or doing other royal work : on leaving a certain 
 haven, it is found that a stranger, of grave eyes and 
 aspect, red beard, of stately robust figure, has stept in. 
 
 Phcenix, upon growing five or six centuries old, builds itself 
 a funeral pyre, and from its ashes arises a new Phcenix: hence 
 its frequent use as a symbol of immortality. Only one of tlie 
 kind is in existence at a time. 
 
 1 King Olaf, the Saint (c. 995-1033 ; King, 1015-1028), is con- 
 fused here with the earlier Olaf Trygvason (964-1000 ; King 
 from 995), about whom the story is told in the original. Both 
 Olafs employed strenuous methods in behalf of Christianity in 
 Norway. 
 
56 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 thej' sail along the beautiful shore ; 
 but after some time, he addresses King Olaf thus : 
 " Yes, King Olaf, it is all beautiful, with the sun 
 shining on it there ; green, fruitful, a right fair home 
 for you ; and many a sore day liad Thor, many a wild 
 fight with the rock Jiituns, before he could make it so. 
 And now you seem minded to put away Thor. King 
 Olaf, have a care ! " said the stranger, drawing-down 
 his brows ; — and when they looked again, he was 
 nowhere to be found. — This is the last appearance of 
 Thor on the stage of this world ! 
 
 Do we not see well enoucrh how the Fable might 
 arise, without unveracity on the part of any one ? It 
 is the way most Gods have come to appear among 
 men : thus, if in Pindar's ^ time ' Neptune ^ was seen 
 once at the Nemean Games,' what was this Neptune 
 too but a ' stranger of noble grave aspect,' — Jit to be 
 ' seen ' ! There is something pathetic, tragic for me 
 in this last voice of Paganism. Thor is vanished, the 
 whole Norse world has vanished : and wiU not return 
 ever again. In like fashion to that, pass away the high- 
 est things. All things that have been in this world, 
 all things that are or will be in it, have to vanish : we 
 have our sad farewell to give them. 
 
 ^ Greek poet (b. c. 522 to soon after 450). 
 
 ^ The Latin equivalent for the Greek sea god Poseidon, who 
 was honored especially in the games held on the Corinthian 
 Isthmus, where he was frequently seen. He had no special con- 
 nection with the Nemean Games, another of the great nationa; 
 festivals of Greece, held at Argolis in the Peloponnesus. 
 
THE HERO AS DIVINITY bl 
 
 That Norse Religion, a rude but earnest, sternly 
 impressive Consecration of Valoiw (so we may define 
 it), sufficed for these old valiant Northmen. Conse- 
 cration of Valour is not a had thing ! We will take 
 it for good, so far as it goes. Neither is there no use 
 in knoioing 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 rela- 
 tion with the Past, — with our own possessions in the 
 Past. For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the 
 possession of the Present ; the Past had always some- 
 thing true, and is a precious possession. In a diiferent 
 time, in a diiferent place, it is always some other side 
 of our common Human Nature that has been develop- 
 ing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these ; 
 not any 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 specially 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." ^ 
 
 ^ The " Three " who preside over sacred things in the Utopian 
 community visited by Meister have just previously explained to 
 him the three religions regarded among them, depending upon 
 reverence for (1) what is above us, (2) what is around us, (3) 
 what is beneath us, — which tliey call the Ethnic, the Philosophi- 
 cal, and the Christian. The " Three " give the answer quoted. 
 (Carlyle's translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, Centenary 
 Ed., II, pp. 267, 268.) 
 
LECTURE II 
 
 THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET : ISLAM 
 
 [PMday, 8th May 1840.] 
 
 From the first rude times of Paganism among the 
 Scandinavians in the North, we advance to a very dif- 
 ferent epoch of religion, among a very different people : 
 Mahometanism among the Arabs. A great change ; 
 what a change and progress is indicated here, in the 
 universal condition and thoughts of men ! 
 
 The Hero is not now regarded as a God among his 
 fellow-men ; but as one God-inspired, as a Prophet. It 
 is the second phasis of Hero-worship : the first or old- 
 est, we may say, has passed away without return ; in 
 the history of the world there will not again be any 
 man, never so great, whom his fellow-men will take for 
 a god. Nay we might rationally ask, Did any set of hu- 
 man beings ever really think the man they saio there 
 standing beside them a god, the maker of this world? 
 Perhaps not : it was usually some man they remem- 
 bered, or had seen. But neither can this any more be. 
 The Great Man is not recognized henceforth as a god 
 any more. 
 
 It was a rude gross error, that of counting the 
 Great Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times 
 difficult to know what he is, or how to account of him 
 and receive him ! The most significant feature in the 
 history of an epoch is the manner it has of welcoming 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 59 
 
 a Great Man. Ever, to the true instincts of men, there 
 is something godlike in him. Whether they shall take 
 him to be a god, to be a prophet, or what they shall 
 take him to be ? that is ever a grand question ; by 
 their way of answering that, we shall see, as through a 
 little window, into the very heart of these men's spir- 
 itual condition. For at bottom the Great Man, as he 
 comes from the hand of Nature, is ever the same kind 
 of thing: Odin, Luther, Johnson, Burns; I hope to 
 make it appear that these are all originally of one stuff ; 
 that only by the world's reception of them, and the 
 shapes they assume, are they so immeasurably diverse. 
 The worship of Odin astonishes us, — to fall prostrate 
 before the Great Man, into deliquium ^ of love and 
 wonder over him, and feel in their hearts that he was a 
 denizen of the skies, a god ! This was imperfect enough : 
 but to welcome, for example, a Burns as we did, was 
 that what we can call perfect ? The most precious gift 
 that Heaven can give to the Earth ; a man of ' genius ' 
 as we call it ; the Soul of a Man actually sent down 
 from the skies with a God's-message to us, — this we 
 waste away as an idle artificial firework, sent to amuse 
 us a little, and sink it into ashes, wreck and ineffectu- 
 ality : such reception of a Great Man I do not call very 
 perfect either ! Looking into the heart of the thing, 
 one may perhaps call that of Burns a still uglier phe- 
 nomenon, betokening still sadder imperfections in man- 
 kind's ways, than the Scandinavian method itself ! To 
 fall into mere unreasoning deliquium oi love and admi- 
 ration, was not good ; but such unreasoning, nay irra- 
 tional supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse ! 
 ^ Melting, swooning. 
 
60 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 — It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship : 
 different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. 
 Indeed the heart of the whole business of the age, one 
 may say, is to do it well. 
 
 We have chosen Mahomet not as the niost eminent 
 Prophet ; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He 
 is by no means the truest of Prophets ; but I do esteem 
 him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our 
 becoming, any of us, INIahometans, I mean to say all 
 the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at 
 his secret : let us try to understand what he meant 
 with the world ; what the world meant and means 
 with him, will then be a more answerable question. 
 Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was 
 a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his 
 religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, be- 
 gins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, 
 which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, 
 are disgracefid to ourselves only. When Pocock ^ 
 inquired of Grotius,^ Where the proof was of that 
 story of the pigeon, trained to pick peas from Ma- 
 homet's ear, and pass for an angel dictating to him ? 
 Grotius answered that there was no proof ! It is 
 really time to dismiss all that. The word this man 
 spoke has been the life-guidance now of a hundred- 
 and-eighty millions of men these twelve-hundred years. 
 These hundred-and-eighty millions were made by God 
 as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures 
 
 1 A very distinguished scholar of Oriental literature and his- 
 tory (1604-1691). His Specimen Historice Arahum (1649) was the 
 fruit of many years of scholarly activity in the Orient. 
 
 2 Hugo de Groot (1583-1645), Dutch jurist and scholar. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 61 
 
 believe in Mahomet's word at this hour, than in any 
 other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was 
 a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which 
 so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and 
 died by ? I, for my part, cannot form any such sup- 
 position. I will believe most things sooner than that. 
 One would be entirely at a loss what to think of this 
 world at all, if quackery so grew and were sanctioned 
 here. 
 
 Alas, such theories are very lamentable. If we 
 would attain to knowledge of anything in God's 
 true Creation, let us disbelieve them wholly ! They 
 are the product of an Age of Scepticism ; ^ they indi- 
 cate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death- 
 life of the souls of men : more godless theory, I think, 
 was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man 
 found a religion ? Why, a false man cannot build 
 a brick house I If he do not know and follow ttmly 
 the properties of mortar, burnt clay and what else he 
 works in, it is no house that he makes, but a rubbish- 
 heap. It will not stand for twelve centuries, to lodge 
 a hundred-and-eighty millions ; it will fall straight- 
 way. A man must conform himself to Nature's laws, 
 he verily in communion with Nature and the truth 
 of things, or Nature will answer him. No, not at all ! 
 Speciosities are specious — ah me! — a Cagliostro,^ 
 many Cagiiostros, prominent world-leaders, do pros- 
 
 ^ Carlyle so names the eighteenth century. See p. 237. 
 
 2 Giuseppe Balsaino (1743-1795). He styled himself Count 
 Cagliostro, and prospered for a while in an extraordinarily suc- 
 cessful career of charlatanism. The best account of his pro- 
 ceedings is in Carlyle's essays on Cagliostro and The Diamond 
 Necklace. 
 
62 LECTITRES ON HEROES 
 
 per by tlieir quackery, for a day. It is like a forged 
 bank-note ; they get it passed out of their worthless 
 hands : others, not the}^, have to smart for it. Nature 
 bursts-up in fire-flames, French Revolutions and such- 
 like, proclaiming with terrible veracity that forged 
 notes are forged. 
 
 But of a Great Man especially, of him I will ven- 
 ture to assert that it is incredible he should have been 
 other than true. It seems to me the primary founda- 
 tion of him, and of all that can lie in him, this. No 
 Mirabeau,^ Napoleon, Burns, Cromwell, no man ade- 
 quate to do anything, but is first of all in right ear- 
 nest about it ; what I call a sincere man. I should say 
 sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first 
 characteristic of all men in any way heroic. Not the 
 sincerity that calls itself sincere ; ah no, that is a very 
 poor matter indeed ; — a shallow braggart conscious 
 sincerity ; oftenest self-conceit mainly. The Great 
 Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot sjjeak of, is 
 not conscious of : nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather 
 of i/isincerity ; for what man can walk accurately by 
 the law of truth for one day ? No, the Great Man does 
 not boast himself sincere, far from that ; perhaps does 
 not ask himself if he is so : I would say rather, his 
 sincerity does not depend on himself ; he cannot help 
 being sincere ! The great Fact of Existence is great 
 to him. Fly as he wiU, he cannot get out of the awful 
 presence of this Reality. His mind is so made ; he is 
 
 ^ 1749-1791. The ablest and most influential member of the 
 French Asseniblj' at the time of the Revohition. He was Presi- 
 dent of the Jacobin Club, but opposed the headlong radicalism 
 that it developed. See Carlyle's Essay on Mirabeau (1837). 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 63 
 
 great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real 
 as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though 
 all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain 
 show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image 
 glares-in upon him ; undeniable, there, there ! — I wish 
 yon to take this as my primary definition of a Great 
 Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to 
 all men that God has made : but a Great Man cannot 
 be without it. 
 
 Such a man is what we caU an origiiial man ; he 
 comes to us at first-hand. A messenger he, sent from 
 the Infinite Unknown ^ with tidings to us. We may 
 call him Poet, Prophet, God ; — in one way or other, we 
 all feel that the words he utters are as no other man's 
 words. Direct from the Inner Fact of things ; — he 
 lives, and has to live, in daily communion with that. 
 Hearsays cannot hide it from him ; he is blind, home- 
 less, miserable, following ^ hearsays ; it glares-in upon 
 him. Really his utterances, are they not a kind of ' rev- 
 elation ; ' — what we must call such for want of some 
 other name ? It is from the heart of the world that he 
 comes ; he is a 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 him understand- 
 ing : ' we must listen before all to him. 
 
 This Mahomet, then, we v/ill in no wise consider as 
 an Inanity and Theatricality, a poor conscious ambi- 
 tious schemer ; we cannot conceive him so. The rude 
 message he delivered was a real one withal ; an earnest 
 
 ^ Comp. pp. 10, 11. 2 Conditional, = " if he follow." 
 
64 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 confused voice from the unknown Deep. The man's 
 words were not false, nor his workings liere below ; no 
 Inanity and Simulacrum ; a fiery, mass of Life cast-up 
 from the great bosom of Nature herself. To kindle 
 the world ; the world's Maker had ordered it so. Neither 
 can the faults, imperfections, insincerities even, of ]\Ia- 
 homet, if such were never so well proved against him, 
 shake this primary fact about him. 
 
 On the whole, we make too much of faults ; the 
 details of the business hide the real centre of it. 
 Faults ? The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be 
 conscious of none. Readers of the Bible above all, one 
 would think, might know better. Who is called there 
 ' the man according to God's own heart ' ? David, 
 the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough ; black- 
 est crimes ; there was no want of sins. And there- 
 upon the unbelievers sneer and ask. Is this your man 
 according to God's heart? The sneer, I must say, 
 seems to me but a shallow one. What are faults, 
 what are the outward details of a life ; if the inner 
 secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often- 
 baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten ? ' It 
 is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Of 
 all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine ? 
 The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious 
 consciousness of no sin ; — that is death ; the heart 
 so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility and 
 fact ; is dead : it is ' pure ' as dead dry sand is pure. 
 David's life and history, as written for us in those 
 Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem 
 ever given of a man's moral progress and warfare 
 here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 65 
 
 the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul to- 
 wards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, 
 sore baffled, down as into entire wreck ; yet a struggle 
 never ended ; ever, with tears, repentance, true un- 
 conquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human na- 
 ture ! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that : 
 ' a succession of falls ' ? Man can do no other. In this 
 wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards ; 
 now fallen, deep-abased ; and ever, with tears, repent- 
 ance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, 
 struggle again still onwards. That his struggle he a 
 faithfid unconquerable one: that is the question of 
 questions. We will put-up with many sad details, if 
 the soul of it were true. Details by themselves will 
 never teach us what it is. I believe we misestimate 
 Mahomet's faults even as faults : but the secret of 
 liim will never be got by dwelling there. We wiU 
 leave all this behind us ; and assuring ourselves that 
 he did mean some true thing, ask candidly what it 
 was or might be. 
 
 These Arabs Mahomet was born among are cer- 
 tainly a notable people. Their country itself is not- 
 able ; the fit habitation for such a race. Savage 
 inaccessible rock-mountains, great grim deserts, al- 
 ternating with beautiful strips of verdure : wherever 
 water is, there is greenness, beauty ; odoriferous balm- 
 shrubs, date-trees, frankincense-trees. Consider that 
 wide waste horizon of sand, empty, silent, like a sand- 
 sea, dividing habitable place from habitable. You 
 are ^11 alone there, left alone with the Universe ; by 
 day a fierce sun blazing down on it with intolerable 
 
6Q LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 radiance ; by night the great deep Heaven with its 
 stars. Such a country is fit for a swift-handed, deep- 
 hearted race of men. There is something most agile, 
 active, and yet most meditative, enthusiastic in the 
 Arab character. The Persians are called the French 
 of the East ; we will call the Arabs Oriental Italians. 
 A gifted noble people ; a people of wild strong feel- 
 ings, and of iron restraint over these : the characteris- 
 tic of noblemindedness, of genius. The wild Bedouin 
 welcomes the stranger to his tent, as one having right 
 to all that is there ; were it his worst enemy, he will 
 slay his foal to treat him, will serve him with sacred 
 hospitality for three days, will set him fairly on his 
 way ; — and then, by another law as sacred, kill him 
 if he can. In words too, as in action. They are not 
 a loquacious peoj^le, taciturn rather ; but eloquent, 
 gifted when they do speak. An earnest, truthful kind 
 of men. They are, we know, of Jewish kindred : 
 but with that deadly terrible earnestness of the Jews, 
 they seem to combine something graceful, brilliant, 
 which is not Jewish. They had ' Poetic contests ' 
 among them before the time of Mahomet. Sale ^ says, 
 at Oeadh, in the South of Arabia, there were yearly 
 fairs, and there, when the merchandising was done, 
 Poets sang for prizes : — the wild people gathered to 
 hear that. 
 
 One Jewish quality these Arabs manifest ; the out- 
 come of many or of all high qualities : what we may 
 call religiosity. From of old they had been zealous wor- 
 
 1 1690-1736. To his translation of the Koran (1731) he pre- 
 fixed a Preliminary Discourse on Arab history, religion, etc. His 
 interpretation of Mahomet's character is friendly. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 67 
 
 shippers, according to their light. They worshipped 
 the stars, as Sabeans ; ^ worshipped many natural ob- 
 jects, — recognised them as symbols, immediate man- 
 ifestations, of the Maker of Nature. It was wrong ; 
 and yet not wholly wrong. All God's works are still 
 in a sense symbols of God. Do we not, as I urged, 
 still account it a merit to recognise a certain inexhaus- 
 tible 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 Pro- 
 phets, these Arabs ; Teachers each to his tribe, each 
 according to the light he had. But indeed, have we 
 not from of old the noblest of proofs, still palpable to 
 every one of us, of what devoutness and noblemind- 
 edness had dwelt in these rustic thoughtful peoples ? 
 Biblical critics seem agreed that our own Booh of Joh 
 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, differ- 
 ent from noble patriotism or sectarianism, reigns in it. 
 A noble Book ; all men's Book ! It is our first, old- 
 est statement of the never-ending Problem, — man's 
 destiny, and God's ways with him here in this earth. 
 And all in such free flowing outlines ; grand in its sin- 
 cerity, in its simplicity ; in its epic melody, and repose 
 of reconcilement. There is the seeing eye, the mildly 
 understanding heart. So true everyway ; true eyesight 
 and vision for all things ; material things no less than 
 spiritual ; the Horse, — ' hast thou clothed his neck 
 1 See p. 12, n. 4. 
 
68 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 with thunder ? ' — he ' laughs at the shaking of the 
 spear ! ' Such living likenesses were never since drawn. 
 Snblime sorrow, sublime reconciliation ; oldest choral 
 melody as of the heart of mankind ; — so soft, and 
 great ; as the summer midnight, as the world with its 
 seas and stars ! There is nothing written, I think, in 
 the Bible or out of it, of equal literary merit. — 
 
 To the idolatrous Arabs one of the most ancient 
 universal objects of worship was that Black Stone, still 
 kept in the building called Caabah ^ at Mecca. Diodo- 
 rus Siculus 2 mentions this Caabah in a way not to 
 be mistaken, as the oldest, most honoured temi^le in 
 his time ; that is, some half -century before our Era. 
 Silvestre de Sacy says there is some likelihood that 
 the Black Stone is an aerolite. In that case, some man 
 might see it fall out of Heaven ! It stands now beside 
 the Well Zemzem ; the Caabah is built over both. A 
 Well is in all places a beautiful affecting object, gush- 
 ing out like life from the hard earth ; — still more so 
 in those hot diy countries, where it is the first condi- 
 tion of being. The Well Zemzem has its name from 
 the bubbling sound of the waters, zem-zem ; the}^ think 
 it is tlie Well which Hagar '^ found with her little 
 
 ^ A cubical structure, " twenty-seven cubits " (about forty 
 feet) each way, in the centre of the court of the great Mosque at 
 Mecca. Into the wall, at a height convenient for kissing, is 
 built the famous Black Stone (probably a meteorite), an object 
 of supreme veneration. 
 
 ^ Historian, first century B. c. His Historical Library is a his- 
 tory of the world to B. c. GO. 
 
 ^ Hagar, the maid of Abraham's wife, Sarah, bore a son, Ish- 
 mael, to Abraham. After the birth of Sarah's son, Isaac, Hagar 
 and Ishmael at the demand of Sarah were cast out into the wil- 
 derness. When they were perishing for lack of water, " God 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 69 
 
 Islimael in the wilderness : the aerolite and it have 
 been sacred now, and had a Caabah over them, for 
 thousands of years. A curious object, that Caabah ! 
 There it stands at this hour, in the black cloth-cover- 
 ing the Sultan sends it yearly ; ' twenty-seven cubits 
 high ; ' with circuit, with double circuit of pillars, 
 with festoon-rows of lamps and quaint ornaments; the 
 lamps will be lighted again this night, — to glitter 
 again under the stars. An authentic fragment of the 
 oldest Past. It is the Kehlah ^ of all Moslem: from 
 Delhi all onwards to Morocco,^ the eyes of innumer- 
 able praying men are turned towards it five times, 
 this day and all days : one of the notablest centres in 
 the Habitation of Men. 
 
 It had been from the sacredness attached to this 
 Caabah Stone and Hagar's Well, from the pilgrimings 
 of all tribes of Arabs thither, that Mecca ^ took its 
 rise as a Town. A great town once, though much de- 
 cayed now. It has no natural advantage for a town ; 
 stands in a sandy hollow amid bare barren hills, at a 
 distance from the sea ; its provisions, its very bread, 
 have to be imported. But so many pilgrims needed 
 lodgings : and then all places of pilgrimage do, from 
 the first, become places of trade. The first day pil- 
 grims meet, merchants have also met ; where men see 
 
 opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water ; and she . . . gave 
 the lad drink. . . . and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness." 
 Cf. Genesis xxi, 19,20. And see alsochaps.xvi,xvii,xxi,xxv,entire. 
 
 ^ The direction toward which the face is turned in prayer. 
 
 2 The whole Moslem world, from British India to Western 
 Africa. 
 
 * In western Arabia, a little over forty miles inland from the 
 Red Sea. 
 
70 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 themselves assembled for one object, they find that 
 they can accomplish other objects which depend on 
 meeting together. Mecca became the Fair of all Ara- 
 bia. And thereby indeed the chief staple and ware- 
 house of whatever Commerce there was between the 
 Indian and the Western countries, Syria, Eg}"}it, even 
 Italy. It had at one time a population of 100,000 ; 
 buyers, forwarders of those Eastern and Western pro- 
 ducts ; importers for their own behoof of provisions 
 and corn. The government was a kind of irregular 
 aristocratic republic, not without a touch of theocracy. 
 Ten Men of a chief tribe, chosen in some rough way, 
 were Governors of Mecca, and Keej^ers of the Caabah. 
 The Koreish were the chief tribe in Mahomet's time ; 
 his own family was of that tribe. The rest of the 
 Nation, fractioned and cut-asunder by deserts, lived 
 under similar rude patriarchal governments by one or 
 several : herdsmen, carriers, traders, generally robbers 
 too ; being of tenest at war one with another, or with all : 
 held together by no open bond, if it were not this meet- 
 ing at the Caabah, where all forms of Arab Idolatry 
 assembled in common adoration ; — held mainly by the 
 imvarcl indissoluble bond of a common blood and lan- 
 guage. In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, 
 unnoticed by the world ; a people of great qualities, 
 unconsciously waiting for the day when they should 
 become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries 
 appear to have been in a tottering state ; much w^as 
 getting into confusion and fermentation among them. 
 Obscure tidings of the most important Event ever trans- 
 acted in this world, the Life and Death of the Divine 
 Man in Judea, at once the symptom and cause of im- 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 71 
 
 measurable change to all people in the world, had in 
 the course of centuries reached into Arabia too ; and 
 could not but, of itsslf, have produced fermentation 
 there. 
 
 It was among this Arab people, so circumstanced, in 
 the year 570 of our Era, that the man Mahomet was 
 born. He was of the family of Hashem, of the Koreish 
 tribe as we said ; though poor, connected with the chief 
 persons of his country. Almost at ^ his birth he lost 
 his Father ; at the age of six years his Mother too, a 
 woman noted for her beauty, her worth and sense : he 
 fell to the charge of his Grandfather, an old man, 
 a hundred years old. A good old man : Mahomet's 
 Father, Abdallah, had been his youngest favourite son. 
 He saw in Mahomet, with his old life-worn eyes, a cen- 
 tury old, the lost Abdallah come back again, all that 
 was left of Abdallah. He loved the little orphan Boy 
 greatly ; used to say, They must take care of that 
 beautiful little Boy, nothing in their kindred was more 
 precious than he. At his death, while the boy was still 
 but two years old,^ he left him in charge to Abu 
 Thaleb the eldest of the Uncles, as to him that now 
 was head of the house. By this Uncle, a just and 
 rational man as everything betokens, Mahomet was 
 brought-up in the best Arab way. 
 
 Mahomet, as he grew up, accompanied his Uncle on 
 trading journeys and suchlike ; in his eighteenth year 
 
 ^ 111 fact, two months before. 
 
 ^ This is not, as appears at first sight, inconsistent with the 
 statement above about his mother ; not the mother, but the 
 grandfather, as head of the house, became guardian immediately 
 upon the father's death. 
 
72 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 one finds him a fighter following his Uncle in war. 
 But perhaps the most significant of all his journeys is 
 one we find noted as of some years' earlier date : a 
 journey to the Fairs of Syria. The young man here 
 first came in contact with a quite foreign world, — 
 with one foreign element of endless moment to him : 
 the Christian Keligion. I know not what to make of 
 that ' Sergius, the Nestorian Monk,' whom Abu Thaleb 
 and he are said to have lodged with ; or how much 
 any monk could have taught one still so young. Prob- 
 ably enough it is greatly exaggerated, this, of the Nes- 
 torian ^ Monk. Mahomet was only fourteen ; had no 
 language but his own : much in Syria must have been 
 a strange unmtelligible whirlpool to him. But the 
 eyes of the lad were open ; glimpses of many things 
 would doubtless be taken-in, and lie very enigmatic as 
 yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, 
 into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to 
 Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet. 
 One other circumstance we must not forget: that 
 he had no school-learning ; of the thing we call school- 
 learning none at all. The art of writing was but just 
 introduced into Arabia ; it seems to be the true opin- 
 ion that Mahomet never could write ! Life in the 
 Desert, with its experiences, was all his education. 
 What of this infinite Universe he, from his dim place, 
 with his own eyes and thoughts, could take in, so 
 much and no more of it was he to know. Curious, if 
 we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except 
 by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncer- 
 
 ^ The Nestorians were a sect of the Early Church, so named 
 from Nestorius, their most conspicuous representative. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 73 
 
 tain rumour of speech in the obscure Aiabi.n Desert, 
 he coukl know nothing. The wisdom that had been 
 before him or at a distance from him in the world, 
 was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the 
 great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many 
 lands and times, no one directly conununicates with 
 this great soul. He is alone there, deep down in the 
 bosom of the Wilderness ; has to grow up so, — alone 
 with Nature and his own Thoughts. 
 
 But, from an early age, he had been remarked as 
 a thoughtful man. His companions named him '•Al 
 Amin, The Faithful.' A maji of truth and fidelity ; 
 true in what he did, in what he spake and thought. 
 They noted that he always meant something. A man 
 rather taciturn in speech ; silent when there was no- 
 thing to be said ; but pertinent, wise, sincere, when 
 he did speak ; always thro\ving light on the matter. 
 This is the only sort of speech worth speaking ! Through 
 life we find him to have been i-egarded as an altogether 
 solid, brotherly, genuine man. A serious, sincere 
 character ; yet amiable, cordial, companionable, jocose 
 even ; — a good laugh in him withal : there are men 
 whose laugh is as untrue as anything about them ; 
 who cannot laugh. One hears of Mahomet's beauty : 
 his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, 
 beaming black eyes ; — I somehow like too that vein 
 on the brow, which swelled-up black when he was 
 in anger : like the ' horse-shoe vein ' in Scott's lied- 
 gauntlet. It was a kind of feature in the Hashem 
 family, this black swelling vein in the brow ; Mahomet 
 had it prominent, as would appear. A spontaneous, 
 passionate, yet just, true-meaning man ! Full of wild 
 
74 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 faculty, fire and light ; of wild worth, all uncultured ; 
 working out his life-task in the depths of the Desert 
 there. 
 
 How he was placed with Kadijah, a rich Widow, as 
 her Steward, and travelled in her business, again to 
 the Fairs of Syria ; how he managed all, as one can 
 well understand, with fidelity, adroitness ; how her 
 gratitude, her regard for him grew : the story of their 
 marriage ^ is altogether a graceful intelligible one, as 
 told us by the Arab authors. He was twenty-five ; she 
 forty, though still beautiful. He seems to have lived in 
 a most affectionate, peaceable, wholesome way with 
 this wedded benefactress ; loving her truly, and her 
 alone. It goes greatly against the impostor theory, 
 the fact that he lived in this entirely unexceptionable, 
 entirely quiet and commonplace way, till the heat of 
 his years was done. He was forty before he talked of 
 any mission from Heaven. All his irregularities, real 
 and supposed, date fi-om after his fiftieth year, when 
 the good Kadijah died. All his ' ambition,' seemingly, 
 had been, hitherto, to live an honest life ; his ' fame,' 
 the mere good opinion of neighbours that knew him, 
 had been sufficient hitherto. Not till he was already 
 getting old, the prurient heat of his *life all burnt out, 
 and ^je«ce growing to be the chief thing this world 
 could give him, did he start on the ' career of ambi- 
 tion ; ' and, belying all his past character and exist- 
 ence, set up as a wretched empty charlatan to acquire 
 what he could now no longer enjoy ! For my share, I 
 have no faith whatever in that. 
 
 Ah no : this deep-hearted Son of the Wilderness, 
 1 In 595 or 596. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 75 
 
 with Ills beaming black eyes and open social deep soul, 
 had other thoughts in him than ambition. A silent 
 great soul ; he was one of those who cannot but be in 
 earnest ; whom Nature herself has appointed to be sin- 
 cere. While others walk in formulas and hearsays, 
 contented enough to dwell there, this man could not 
 screen himself in formulas ; he was alone with his own 
 soul and the reality of things. The great Mystery of Ex- 
 istence, as I said, glared-in upon him, with its terrors, 
 with its splendours ; no hearsays could hide that un- 
 speakable fact. " Here am I ! " Such sincerity, as we 
 named it, has in very truth something of divine. The 
 word of such a man is a Voice direct from Nature's own 
 Heart. Men do and must listen to that as to nothing 
 else ; — all else is wind in comparison. From of old, a 
 thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, 
 had been in this man : AVhat am I ? What is this un- 
 fathomable Thing I live in, which men name Uni- 
 verse ? What is Life ; what is Death ? What am I to 
 believe ? What am I to do ? The grim rocks of Mount 
 Hara,^ of Mount Sinai,^ the stern sandy solitudes an- 
 swered not. The great Heaven rolling silent over- 
 head, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There 
 was no answer. The man's own soul and what of God's 
 inspiration dwelt there, had to answer ! 
 
 It is the thing which all men have to ask themselves ; 
 which we too have to ask, and answer. This wild man 
 felt it to be of inftiiite moment ; all otlier things of no 
 
 ^ Near Mecca. 
 
 ^ In the southern part of the peninsula east of the Gulf of 
 Suez. See Genesis xix, for the experiences of another Hero- 
 Prophet on its " grim rocks." 
 
76 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 moment whatever in comparison. The jargon of argu- 
 mentative Greek Sects, vague traditions of Jews, the 
 stupid routine of Arab Idolatry : there was no answer 
 in these. A Hero, as I repeat, has this first distinction, 
 which indeed we may call first and last, the Alpha and 
 Omega of his whole Heroism, That he looks through 
 the shows of things into thinf/s. Use and wont, re- 
 spectable 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 — Idolatries ; ' 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 no- 
 thing for this man. Though all men walk by them, 
 what good is it? The great Reality stands glaring 
 there upon hbn. He there has to answer it, or perish 
 miserably. Now, even now, or else through aU Eternity 
 never ! Answer it ; thoii must find an answer. — Am- 
 bition ? What could all Ai*abia do for this man ; with 
 the crown of Greek Heraclius,^ of Persian Chosroes, 
 and all crowns in the Earth ; — what could they all do 
 for him ? It was not of the Earth he wanted to hear 
 tell ; it was of the Heaven above and of the Hell 
 beneath. All crowns and sovereignties whatsoever, 
 where would theij in a few brief years be? To be 
 Sheik 2 of Mecca or Arabia, and have a bit of gilt 
 wood put into your hand, — will that be one's salva 
 
 ^ B\zaiitine Emperor from 610 to 641. He defeated the Per- 
 sians under Cliosroes II, in the Battle of Nineveh, 627, the fifth 
 year of the Mohammedan era. 
 
 ^ Tribal head ; also a religious dignitary. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 77 
 
 tlon? I decidedly think not. We will leave it alto- 
 gether, this impostor hypothesis, as not credible ; not 
 very tolerable even, woi'thy chiefly of dismissal by us, 
 Mahomet had been wont to retire yearly, during 
 the month Ramadhan, into solitude and silence ; as 
 indeed was the Arab custom ; a praiseworthy custom, 
 which such a man, above all, would find natural and 
 useful. Communing with his own heart, in the silence 
 of the mountains ; himself silent ; open to the ' small 
 still voices : ' it was a right natural custom ! Mahomet 
 was in his fortieth year, when having withdrawn to a 
 cavern in Mount Hara, near Mecca, during this Rama- 
 dhan, ^ to pass the month in pi-ayer, and meditation 
 on those great question's, he one day told his wife 
 Kadijah, who with his household was with him or near 
 him this year. That by the unspeakable special favour 
 of Heaven he had now found it all out ; was in doubt 
 and dai'kness no longer, but saw it all. That all these 
 Idols and Formulas were nothing, miserable bits of 
 wood ; that there was One God in and over all ; and 
 we must leave all Idols, and look to Him. That God 
 is great ; and that there is nothing else great I 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 gar- 
 ment veiling the Eternal Splendour. ' Alla\, akbar, 
 God is great ; ' — and then also ' Islam,^ ^ Th^t we 
 must submit to God. That our whole strength lies, in 
 
 ^ The days of this month, which comes at various seasons of the 
 year, according to the lunar calendar, are observed by all Mussul- 
 mans as an absolute fast from dawn to sunset. 
 
 ^ Resignation, surrendering. See New Eng. Diet. 
 
78 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He do to us. 
 For this world, and for the other ! The thing He sends 
 to us, were it death and worse than death, shall be 
 good, shall be best ; we resign ourselves to God. — 
 ' If this be Islam,'' says Goethe, ' do we not all live in 
 Islam f ' Yes, all of us that have any moral life ; we 
 all live so. It has ever been held the highest wisdom 
 for a man not merely to submit to Necessity, — Neces- 
 sity will make him submit, — but to know and believe 
 well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered 
 was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To 
 cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great 
 God's-world in his small fraction of a brain ; to know 
 that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a 
 Just Law, that the soul of it was Good ;- — that his part 
 in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in 
 devout silence foUow that ; not questioning it, obeying 
 it as unquestionable. 
 
 I say, this is yet the only true morality known. A 
 man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road 
 towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins him- 
 seK to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of 
 all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-aud- 
 loss calculations ; he is victorious while he cooperates 
 with that great central Law, not victorious otherwise : 
 — and surely his first chance of cooperating with it, 
 or getting into the course of it, is to know with his 
 whole soul that it is ; that it is good, and alone good I 
 This is the soul of Islam ; it is properly the soul 
 of Christianity ; — for Islam is definable as a con- 
 fused form of Christianity ; had Christianity not been, 
 neither had it been. Christianity also commands us, 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 79 
 
 before all, to be resigned to God. We are to take no 
 counsel with flesh-and-blood ; give ear to no vain cav- 
 ils, vain sorrows and wishes : to know that we know 
 nothing ; that the worst and crudest to our eyes is 
 not what it seems ; that we have to receive whatso- 
 ever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, It 
 is good and wise, God is great ! " Though He slay me, 
 yet will I trust in Him." Islam means in its way De- 
 nial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This is yet the high- 
 est Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our Earth. 
 
 Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the 
 darkness of this wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling 
 splendour as of life and Heaven, in the great dark- 
 ness which threatened to be death : he called it rev- 
 elation and the angel Gabriel ; ^ — who of us yet can 
 know what to call it ? It is the ' inspiration of the 
 Almighty that giveth us understanding.' To know ; 
 to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act, 
 — of which the best Logics can but babble on the 
 surface. ' Is not Belief the true god-announcing Mir- 
 acle ? ' says Novalls. — That Mahomet's whole soul, 
 set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, 
 should feel as if it were important and the only im- 
 portant thing, was very natural. That Providence 
 had unspeakably honoured him, by revealing it, sav- 
 ing him from death and darkness ; that he therefore 
 was bound to make known the same to all creatures : 
 this is what was meant by ' Mahomet is the Prophet 
 of God ; ' this too is not without its true meaning. — 
 
 The good Kadijah, we can fancy, listened to him 
 
 1 Who was said to have brought the Koran to Mahomet from 
 Heaven. 
 
4 
 
 80 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 witli wouder, with doubt : at length she answered : 
 Yes, it was true this that he said. One can fancy too 
 the boundless gratitude of Mahomet ; and how of all 
 the kindnesses she had done him, this of believing the 
 3arnest struggling word he now spoke was the greatest. 
 It is certain,' says Novalis, ' my Conviction gains in- 
 finitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.' 
 It is a boundless favour. — He never forgot this good 
 Kadijah. Long afterwai'ds, Ayesha his young favour- 
 ite wife, a woman who indeed distinguished herself 
 among the Moslem, by all manner of qualities, through 
 her whole long life ; this young brilliant Ayesha was, 
 one day, questioning him : " Now am not I better than 
 Kadijah? She was a widow ; old, and had lost her 
 looks : you love me better than you did her ? " — 
 " No, by Allah ! " answered Mahomet : " No, by Al- 
 lah ! 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 believed in him ; these 
 with his young Cousin Ali, Abu Thaleb's son, were his 
 fii'st converts. 
 
 He spoke of his Doctrine to this man and that ; but 
 the most treated it with ridicule, with indifference ; in 
 three years, I think, he had gained but thirteen fol- 
 lowers. His progress was slow enough. His encour- 
 agement to go on, was altogether the usual encourage- 
 ment that such a man in such a case meets. After 
 some three years of small success, he in^^ted forty of 
 his chief kindred to an entertainment ; and there stood- 
 up and told them what his pretension was : that he had 
 this thing to promulgate abroad to all men ; that it was 
 the highest thing, the one thing : which of them would 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 81 
 
 second him in that? Amid the doubt and silence of all, 
 young" Ali, as yet a lad of sixteen, impatient of the 
 silence, started- up, and exclaimed in passionate fierce 
 language, That he would ! The assembly, among whom 
 was Abu Thaleb, Ali's Father, could not be unfriendly 
 to Mahomet ; yet the sight there, of one unlettered 
 elderly man, with a lad of sixteen, deciding on such 
 an enterprise against all mankind, appeared ridiculous 
 to them ; the assembly broke-up in laughter. Never- 
 theless it proved not a laughable thing ; it was a very 
 serious thing ! As for this young Ali, one cannot but 
 like him. A noble-minded creature, as he shows him- 
 self, now and always afterwards ; full of affection, of 
 fiery daring. Something chivalrous in him ; brave as 
 a lion ; yet with a grace, a truth and affection worthy 
 of Christian knighthood. He died by assassination in 
 the Mosque at Bagdad ; a death occasioned by his own 
 generous fairness, confidence in the fairness of others : 
 he said. If the wound proved not unto death, they must 
 pardon the Assassin ; but if it did, then they must slay 
 him straightway, that so they two in the same hour 
 might appear before God, and see which side of that 
 quarrel was the just one ! 
 
 Mahomet naturally gave offence to the Koreish, 
 Keepers of the Caabah, superintendents of the Idols. 
 One or two men of influence had joined him : the 
 thing spread slowly, but it was spreading. Naturally 
 he gave offence to everybody: Who is this that pre- 
 tends to be wiser than we all ; that rebukes us all, 
 as mere fools and worshippers of wood ! Abu Thaleb 
 the good Uncle spoke with him : Could he not be 
 silent about all that ; believe it all for himself, and 
 
82 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 not trouble others, anger the chief men, endanger him- 
 self and them all, talking of it ? Mahomet answered : 
 If the Sun stood on his right hand and the Moon on 
 his left, ordering him to hold his peace, he could not 
 obey ! No : there was something in this Truth he had 
 got which was of Nature herself; equal in rank to 
 Sun, or Moon, or whatsoever thing Nature had made. 
 It would speak itseK there, so long as the Almighty 
 allowed it, in spite of Sun and Moon, and all Koreish 
 and all men and things. It must do that, and could 
 do no other. Mahomet answered so ; and, they say, 
 ' burst into tears.' Burst into tears : he felt that Abu 
 Thaleb was good to him ; that the task he had got 
 was no soft, but a stern and great one. 
 
 He went on speaking to who would listen to him ; 
 publishing his Doctrine among the pilgrims as they 
 came to Mecca ; gaining adherents in this place and 
 that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret 
 danger attended him. His powei-f ul relations protected 
 Mahomet himself ; but by and by, on his own advice, 
 aU his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek refuge 
 in Abyssinia over the sea.^ The Koreish grew ever 
 angrier ; laid plots, and swore oaths among them, to 
 put Mahomet to death with their own hands. Abu 
 Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Ma- 
 homet is not solicitous of sympathy from us ; but his 
 outlook at this time was one of the dismalest. He 
 had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise ; fly hither 
 and thither ; homeless, in continual peril of his life. 
 More than once it seemed all-over with him; more 
 than once it turned on a straw, some rider's horse 
 ' Red Sea. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 83 
 
 taking fright or the like, whether Mahomet and his 
 Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of 
 at all. But it was not to end so. 
 
 In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his 
 enemies all banded against him, forty sworn men, one 
 out of every tribe, waiting to take his life, and no contin- 
 uance possible at Mecca for him any longer, Mahomet 
 fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had 
 gained some adherents ; ^ the place they now call Me- 
 dina, or ^M§dinat al Nahi, the City of the Prophet,' 
 from that circumstance. It lay some 200 miles off,^ 
 through rocks and deserts ; not without great difficulty, 
 in such mood as we may fancy, he escaped thither, and 
 found welcome. The whole East dates its era from this 
 Flight, Hegira as they name it : the Year 1 of this 
 Hegira is 622 of our Era, the fifty-third of Mahomet's 
 life. He was now becoming an old man ; his friends 
 sinking round him one by one ; his path desolate, 
 encompassed with danger : unless he could find hope 
 in his own heart, the outward face of things was but 
 hopeless for him. It is so with aU men in the like case. 
 Hitherto Mahomet had professed to publish his Reli- 
 gion by the way of preaching and persuasion alone. 
 But now, driven foully out of his native country, since 
 unjust men had not only given no ear to his ear- 
 nest Heaven's-message, the deep cry of his heart, but 
 would not even let him live if he kept speaking 
 it, — the wild Son of the Desert resolved to defend 
 himself, like a man and Arab. If the Koreish will 
 
 ^ In 620 Mahomet converted six pilgrims from Yathreb, 
 which city two years later accepted him as a true Prophet. 
 ^ Toward the north. 
 
84 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 have it so, they shall have it. Tidings, felt to be of 
 infinite moment to them and all men, they would not 
 listen to these ; would trample them down by sheer 
 violence, steel and murder : well, let steel try it then ! 
 Ten years more this Mahomet had ; all of fighting, of 
 breathless impetuous toil and struggle ; ^ with what 
 result we know. 
 
 Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his 
 Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what 
 we have to boast of the Christian Religion,, that it pro- 
 pagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and 
 conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argu- 
 ment of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is 
 a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed : but where 
 will you get your sword ! Every new opinion, at its 
 starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's 
 head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of 
 the whole world believes it ; there is one man against 
 all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate 
 with that, will do little for him. You must first get 
 your sword ! On the whole, a thing will propagate 
 itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Re- 
 ligion either, that it always disdained the sword, when 
 once it had got one. Charlemagne's conversion of the 
 Saxons 2 was not by preaching. I care little about the 
 
 1 In 629 he marched on Mecca with 10,000 followers and de- 
 stroyed the idols about the Caabah in the ]Mosque. In 632 he 
 made a pilgrimage to Mecca at the head of 100,000 converts. 
 He died soon after, in the same j'ear. 
 
 2 Charlemagne (742-814) was at war with the Saxons for over 
 thirty years. He was determined to Christianize them no less than 
 to conquer them in battle. St. Lebuin, impatient at his slow pro- 
 gress in converting them, threatened them with Charlemagne's 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 85 
 
 sword : I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in 
 this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it 
 has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and 
 pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir it- 
 self, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it ; very 
 sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which 
 does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than 
 itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In 
 this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do 
 no wrong : the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, 
 what we call truest, that thing and not the other will 
 be found growing at last. 
 
 Here however, in reference to much that there is in 
 Mahomet and his success, we are to remember what 
 an umpire Nature is ; what a greatness, composure of 
 depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat 
 to cast into the Earth's bosom : your wheat may be 
 mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust 
 and all imaginable rubbish ; no matter : you cast it 
 into the kind just Earth ; she grows th^ wheat, — the 
 whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says 
 nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing 
 there ; the good Earth is silent about aU the rest, — 
 has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, 
 and makes no complaint about it I So everywhere in 
 Nature ! She is true and not a lie ; and yet so gi-eat, 
 and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a 
 thing only that it he genuine of heart ; she will protect 
 
 sword. In retaliation the destruction of churches became the 
 accompaniment of Saxon revolt. Charlemagne established gar- 
 risons all over the country, and (777) made Christian baptism 
 compulsory. 
 
86 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 it if so ; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in 
 all the things she ever gave harbour to. Alas, is not 
 this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever 
 came into the world ? The body of them all is imperfec- 
 tion, an element of light In darkness : to us they have 
 to come embodied in mere Logic, in some merely scien- 
 tific Theorem of the Universe ; which cannot be com- 
 plete ; which cannot but be found, one day, incomplete, 
 erroneous, and so die and disappear. The body of all 
 Truth dies ; and yet in all, I say, there is a soul which 
 never dies ; which in new and ever-nobler embodi- 
 ment lives immortal as man himself ! It is the way 
 with Nature. The genuine essence of Truth never dies. 
 That it be genuine, a voice from the great Deep of 
 Nature, there is the point at Nature's judgment-seat. 
 What ice call pure or impure, is not with her the final 
 question. Not how much chaff is in yon ; but whether 
 you have any wheat. Pure ? I might say to many a 
 man : Yes, you are pure ; pure enough ; but you are 
 chaff, — insincere hypothesis, hearsay, formality ; you 
 never were in contact with the great heart of the Uni- 
 verse at all ; you are properly neither pure nor impure ; 
 you are nothing. Nature has no business with you. 
 
 Mahomet's Creed we called a kind of Christianity ; 
 and really, if we look at the wild rapt earnestness with 
 which it was believed and laid to heart, I should say 
 a better kind than that of those miserable Syrian Sects, 
 with their vain janglings about Homoiousion and 
 Ilomoousio7i, ^ the head full of worthless noise, the 
 
 * 3/ioios = similar, 6jurfs = same, -(- <>"<'■'" = essence. These "vain 
 logical janglings " of the fourth century were over the question of 
 whether Christ and God wereof similar essenceorthesameesseuce. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 87 
 
 heart empty and dead ! The 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, chopping 
 barren logic merely ! Out of all that rubbish of Arab 
 idolatries, argumentative theologies, traditions, subtle- 
 ties, rumours and hypotheses of Greeks and Jews, with 
 their idle 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 flies stick on them,' — these are wood, I tell 
 you ! They can do nothing for you ; they are an im- 
 potent blasphemous pretence ; a horror and aboinina- 
 tion, if ye knew them. God alone is ; God alone has 
 power ; He made us, He can kill us and keep us alive : 
 ' Allah ahhar, God is great.' Understand that His will 
 is the best for you ; that howsoever sore to flesh-and- 
 blood, you will find it the wisest, best : you are bound 
 to take it so ; in this world and in the next, you have 
 no other thing that you can do I 
 
 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 otlier, 
 I say it is still the one thing worthy of being believed 
 by all men. Man does hereby become the high-priest 
 of this Temple of a World. He is in harmony with 
 the Decrees of the Author of this World ; cooperat- 
 ing with them, not vainly withstanding them : I know, 
 
88 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 to this day, no better definition of Duty than that 
 same. All that is r if/ Jit includes itself in this of co- 
 operating with the real Tendency of the World : you 
 succeed by this (the World's Tendency wiU succeed), 
 you are good, and in the right course there. Homoi- 
 ousion. Homo ousi 011^ vain logical jangle, then or be- 
 fore or at any time, may jangle itself out, and go 
 whither and how it likes : his is the thing it all strug- 
 gles to mean, if it would mean anything. If it do not 
 succeed in meaning this, it means nothing. Not that 
 Abstractions, logical Propositions, be correctly worded 
 or incorrectly ; but that living concrete 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 Reality, direct from 
 the great Heart of Nature once more. Arab idolatries, 
 Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had 
 to go up in flame, — mere dead fuel^ in various senses, 
 for this which was^re. 
 
 It was during these wild warfarings and strugglings, 
 especially after the Flight to ^ Mecca, that Mahomet 
 dictated at intervals his Sacred Book, which they name 
 Koran or Reading^ ' Thing to be read.' This is the 
 Work he and his disciples made so much of, asking 
 all the world, Is not that a miracle? The Mahom- 
 etans resrard their Koran with a reverence which few 
 Christians pay even to their Bible. It is admitted 
 everywhere as the standard of all law and all practice ; 
 the thing to be gone-upon in speculation and life : the 
 message sent direct out of Heaven, which this Earth 
 ^ Obviously a mere slip. See p. 83. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 89 
 
 has to coDform to, and walk by ; the thing to be read. 
 Their Judges decide by it ; all Moslem are bound to 
 study it, seek in it for the light of their life. They 
 liave mosques where it is all read daily ; thirty relays 
 of priests take it up in succession, get through the 
 whole each day. There, for twelve-hundred years, has 
 the voice of this Book, at all moments, kept sounding 
 through the ears and the hearts of so many men; We 
 hear of Mahometan Doctors that had read it seventy- 
 thousand times ! 
 
 Very curious : if one souglit for ' discrepancies of 
 national taste,' here surely were the most eminent 
 instance of that ! We also can read the Koran ; our 
 Translation of it, by Sale, is known to be a very fair 
 one. I must say, it is as toilsome reading as I ever 
 undertook. A wearisome confused jvmible, crude, in- 
 condite ;i endless iterations, loug-windedness, entangle- 
 ment ; most crude, incondite ; — insupjjortable stupid- 
 ity, in short ! Nothing but a sense of duty could carry 
 any European through the Koran. We read in it, as 
 we might in the State-Paper Office, unreadable masses 
 of lumber, that perhaps we may get some glimpses of 
 a remarkable man. It is true we have it under disad- 
 vantages : the Arabs see more method in it than we. 
 Mahomet's followers found the Koran lying all in 
 fractions, as it had been written-down at first jH'omulga- 
 tion ; much of it, they say, on shoidder-blades of mutton,^ 
 flung pellmell into a chest : and they published it, 
 without any discoverable order as to time or other- 
 wise ; — merely trying, as would seem, and this not 
 
 ^ Disordered, rude. 
 
 2 Also on flat stones, bits of leather, palm leaves, etc. 
 
90 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 xery strictly, to put the longest chapters first. The 
 real beginning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end : 
 for the earliest portions were the shortest. Read in its 
 historical sequence it perhaps would not be so bad. 
 Much of it, too, they say, is rhythmic ; a kind of wild 
 chanting song, in the original. This may be a great 
 point ; much perhajas has been lost in the Translation 
 here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to 
 see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as 
 a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth ; as 
 a well-written book, or indeed as a book at all ; and 
 not a bewildered rhapsody ; ivritten, so far as writing 
 goes, as badly as almost any book ever was ! So much 
 for national discrepancies, and the standard of taste. 
 
 Yet I should say, it was not unintelligible how the 
 Arabs might so love it. When once you get this con- 
 fused coil of a Koran fairly off your hands, and have 
 it behind you at a distance, the essential type of it 
 begins to disclose itself ; and in this there is a merit 
 quite other than the literary one. If a book come 
 from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts ; 
 all art and authorcraft are of small amount to that. 
 One would say the primary character of the Koran is 
 this of its genuineness^ of its being a hona-Jide book. 
 Prideaux,! I know, and others have represented it as 
 a mere bundle of juggleries ; chapter after chapter 
 got-up to excuse and varnish the author's successive 
 sins, forward his ambitions and quackeries : but really 
 it is time to dismiss all that. I do not assert Ma- 
 
 ^ English clergyman and scholar (1648-1724). A most vigor- 
 ous exponent of the " impostor hypothesis," in The True Nature 
 of Imposture fully Displayed in the Life of Mahomet (1697). 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 91 
 
 hornet's continual sincerity : who is continually sin- 
 cere ? But I confess I can make nothing of the critic, in 
 these times, who would accuse him of deceit ^^repense ; 
 of conscious deceit generally, or perhaps at all ; — still 
 more, of living in a mere element of conscious deceit, 
 and writing this Koran as a forger and juggler would 
 have done ! Every candid eye, I think, will read the 
 Koran far otherwise than so. It is the confused fer- 
 ment of a great rude human soul ; rude, untutored, 
 that camiot even read ; but fervent, earnest, strug- 
 gling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a 
 kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter him- 
 self ; the thoughts crowd on him pellmell : for very 
 multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. 
 The meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form 
 of composition, is stated in no sequence, method, 
 or coherence ; — they are not shaped at all, these 
 thoughts of his ; flung-out unshaped, as they struggle 
 and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state. 
 We said ' stupid : ' yet natural stupidity is by no 
 means tbe character of Mahomet's Book ; it is natural 
 uncultivation rather. The man has not studied speak- 
 ing ; in the haste and pressure of continual fighting, 
 has not time to mature himself into fit speech. The 
 panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man 
 strviggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation ; 
 this is the mood he is in ! A headlong haste ; for very 
 magnitude of meaning, he cannot get himself articu- 
 lated into words. The successive utterances of a soul 
 in that mood, coloured by the various vicissitudes of 
 three-and-twenty years ; now well uttered, now worse : 
 this is the Koran. 
 
92 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 For we are to consider Maliomet, through these 
 three-and-twenty years, as the centre of a world wholly 
 in conflict. Battles with the Koreish and Heathen, 
 quarrels among his own people, backslidings of his 
 own wild heart ; all this kept him in a perpetual 
 whii-1, his soul knowing rest no more. In wakeful 
 nights, as one may fancy, the wild soul of the man, 
 tossing amid these vortices, would hail any light of a 
 decision for them as a veritable light from Heaven ; 
 any making-up of his mind, so blessed, indispensable 
 for him there, would seem the inspiration of a Gabriel. 
 Forger and juggler ? No, no ! This great fiery heart, 
 seething, simmering like a great furnace of thoughts, 
 was not a juggler's. His Life was a Fact to him ; this 
 God's Universe an awful Fact and Reality. He has 
 faults enough; The maft was an uncultured semi-bar- 
 barous Son of Nature, much of the Bedouin still cling- 
 ing to him : we must take him for that. But for a 
 wretched Simulacrum, a hungry Impostor without eyes 
 or heart, practising for a mess of pottage such blas- 
 phemous swindlery, forgery of celestial documents, 
 continual high-treason against his Maker and Self, 
 we will not and cannot take him. 
 
 Sincerity, in all senses, seems to me the merit of 
 the Koran ; what had rendered it precious to the wild 
 Arab men. It is, after all, the first and last merit in 
 a book ; gives rise to merits of all kinds, — nay, at 
 bottom, it alone can give rise to merit of any kind. 
 Curiously, through these incondite masses of tradi- 
 tion, vituperation, complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, 
 a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call 
 poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book is 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 93 
 
 made-up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement 
 enthusiastic extempore preaching. He returns forever 
 to the old stories of the Prophets as they went current 
 in the Arab memory : how Prophet after Prophet, 
 the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet Hud, the Prophet 
 Moses, Christian and other real and fabulous Prophets, 
 had come to this Tribe and to that, warning men of 
 their sin ; and been received by them even as he 
 Mahomet was, — which is a great solace to him. These 
 things he repeats ten, perhaps twenty times ; again 
 and ever again, with wearisome iteration ; has never 
 done repeating tliem. A brave Samuel Johnson, in 
 his forlorn garret, might con-over the Biographies of 
 Authors in that way ! This is the great staple of the 
 Koran. But curiously, through all this, comes ever 
 and anon some glance as of the real thinker and seer. 
 He has actually an eye for the world, this Mahomet : 
 with a certain directness and rugged vigour, he brings 
 home still, to our heart, the thing his own heart has 
 been opened to. I make but little of his praises of 
 Allah, which many praise ; they are borrowed I suppose 
 mainly from the Hebrew, at least they are far surpassed 
 there. But the eye that flashes direct into the heart 
 of things, and sees the truth of them ; this is to me a 
 highly interesting object. Great Nature's own gift ; 
 which she bestows on all ; but which only one in the 
 thousand does not cast sorrowfully away : it is what 
 I call sincerity of vision ; the test of a sincere heart. 
 
 Mahomet can work no miracles ; he often answers 
 impatiently : I can work no miracles. I ? 'I am a 
 Public Preacher ; ' ^ appointed to preach this doctrine 
 
 * Mahomet always declared that it was his sole divine com* 
 mission to preach the oneness of God. 
 
94 LECTOHES ON HEROES 
 
 to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had 
 really from of old been all one great miracle to him. 
 Look over the world, says he ; is it not wonderful, the 
 work of Allah ; wholly ' a sign to you,' if your eyes 
 were open ! This Earth, God made it for you ; ' ap- 
 pointed paths in it ; ' you can live in it, go to and fro 
 on it. — The clouds in the dry country of Arabia, to 
 Mahomet tliey are very wonderful : Great clouds, he 
 says, born in the deep bosom of the Upi)er Immensity, 
 where do they come from ! They hang there,^the great 
 black monsters ; pour-dowu their rain-deluges ' to re- 
 vive a dead earth,' and grass springs, and ' tall leafy 
 palm-trees with their date-clusters hanging round. Is 
 not that a sign ? ' Your cattle too, — Allah made 
 them ; serviceable dumb creatures ; they change the 
 grass into milk ; you have your clothing from tliem, 
 very strange creatures ; they come ranking home at 
 evening-time, 'and,' adds he, 'and are a credit to 
 you ! ' Ships also, — he talks often about ships : Huge 
 moving mountains, they spread-out their cloth wings, 
 go bounding through the water there, Heaven's wind 
 driving them ; anon they lie motionless, God has 
 withdrawn the wind, they lie dead, and cannot stir ! 
 Miracles ? ci-ies he : What miracle would you have ? 
 Are not you yourselves there ? God made you, ' shaped 
 you out of a little clay.' Ye were small once ; a few 
 years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, 
 thoughts, 'ye have compassion on one another.' Old 
 age comes-on you, and gray hairs ; your strength fades 
 into feebleness ; ye sink down, and again are not. 
 ' Ye have compassion on one another : ' this struck me 
 much : Allah might have made you having no compas- 
 
 I 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 95 
 
 sion on one another, — how had it been then ! This is 
 a great direct thought, a glance at first-hand into the 
 very fact of tilings. Rude vestiges of poetic genius, 
 of whatsoever is best and truest, are visible in this 
 man. A strong untutored intellect ; eyesight, heart : 
 a strong wild man, — might have shaped himself into 
 Poet, King, Priest, any kind of Hero. 
 
 To his eyes it is forever clear that this world wholly 
 is miraculous. He sees what, as we said once before, 
 all great thinkers, the rude Scandinavians themselves, 
 in one way or other, have contrived to see : That this 
 so solid-looking material world is, at bottom, in very 
 deed. Nothing ; is a visual and tactual Manifestation 
 of God's power and presence, — a shadow hung-out 
 by Him, on the bosom of the void Infinite ; nothing 
 more. The mountains, he says, these great rock-moun- 
 tains, they shall dissipate themselves * like clouds ; ' 
 melt into the Blue as clouds do, and not be ! He fig- 
 ui'es the Earth, in the Arab fashion, Sale tells us, as 
 an immense Plain or flat Plate of ground, the moun- 
 tains are set on that to steady it. At the Last Day 
 they shall disappear ' like clouds ; ' the whole Earth 
 shall go spinning, whirl itself off into wreck, and as 
 dust and vapour vanish in the Inane. Allah with- 
 draws his hand from it, and it ceases to be. The uni- 
 versal empire of Allah, presence everywhere of an un- 
 speakable Power, a Splendour, and a Terror not to be 
 named, as the true force, essence and reality, in all 
 things whatsoever, was continually clear to this man. 
 What a modern talks-of by the name. Forces of Na^ 
 ture, Laws of Nature ; and does not figure as a divine 
 thing ; not even as one thing at all, but as a set of 
 
96 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 things, undivine enough, — saleable, curious, good for 
 jiropelling steamships I With our Sciences and Cyclo- 
 pajdias, we are apt to forget the divineness^ in those 
 laboratories of ours. 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 autumn. The best science, without this, is but 
 as the dead tiynher ; it is not the growing tree and 
 forest, — which gives ever-new timber, among other 
 things I Man cannot knoio either, unless he can ivo7^- 
 shiji in some way. His knowledge is a pedantry, and 
 dead thistle, other\vise. 
 
 Much has been said and written about the sensual- 
 ity of Mahomet's Religion ; more than was just. The 
 indulgences, criminal to us, which he permitted, were 
 not of his appointment ; he found them practised, 
 xmquestioned from inunemorial time in Arabia ; what 
 he did was to curtail them, restrict them, not on one 
 but on many sides. His Religion is not an easy one : 
 with rigorous fasts, lavations,^ strict complex formulas, 
 praj^ers 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 calimmy on men to say that 
 they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of plea- 
 sure, recompense, — sugar-plums of any kind, in this 
 world or the next ! In the meanest mortal there lies 
 
 1 Purification, of both body and clothes, before any religious 
 act. 
 
 * Also pilgrimages to Mecca, and the giving of alms (see p. 
 101). 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 97 
 
 something nobler. The poor swearing soldier, hired to 
 be shot, has his ' honour o£ a 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 himself under God's Heaven as a god- 
 made Man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. 
 Show him the way of doing that, the dullest daydrudge 
 kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who 
 say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnega- 
 tion, martyrdom, death are the allurements that act 
 on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life 
 of him, you have a flame that burns-up all lower 
 considei'ations. Not happiness, but something higher : 
 one sees this even in the frivolous classes, with their 
 ' point of honour' and the like. Not by flattering our 
 appetites ; no, by awakening the Heroic that slum- 
 bers 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 connnon voluptuary, intent 
 mainly on base enjoyments, — nay on enjoyments of 
 any kind. His household was of the frugalest ; his 
 common diet barley-bread and water: sometimes for 
 months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. 
 They record with just pride that he would mend his 
 own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor, hard-toiling, 
 ill-provided man ; careless of what vulgar men toil for. 
 Not a bad man, I should say ; something better in 
 him than Jiunger of any sort, — or these wild Arab 
 men, fighting and jostling three-and-twenty years at 
 his hand, in close contact with him always, would not 
 have reverenced him so ! They were wild men, burst- 
 
98 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 ing ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce 
 sincerity ; without right worth and maiihood, no man 
 could have commanded them. They called him Pro- 
 phet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with 
 them ; bare, not enshrined in any mystery ; visibly 
 clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes; fight- 
 ing, counselling, ordering in the midst of them : they 
 must have seen what kind of a man he was, let him be 
 called what you like ! No emperor with his tiaras was 
 obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. Dur- 
 ing three-and-twenty years of rough actual trial. I find 
 something of a veritable Hero necessary for that, of 
 itself. 
 
 His last words are a prayer ; broken ejaculations of 
 a heart struggling-up, in trembling hope, towards its 
 Maker. We cannot say that his religion made him 
 worse ; it made him better; good, not bad. Generous 
 things are recorded of him : when he lost his Daugh- 
 ter, the thing he answered is, in his own dialect, every- 
 way sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians, 
 ' The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away ; blessed 
 be the name of the Lord.' He answered in like man- 
 ner of Seid, his emancipated well-beloved Slave, the 
 second of the believers. Seid had fallen in the war of Ta- 
 buc,i the first of Mahomet's fightings with the Greeks. 
 Mahomet said. It was well ; Seid had done his Mas- 
 ter's work, Seid had now gone to his Master : it was 
 all well with Seid. Yet Seid's daughter found him 
 weeping over the body; — the old gray-haired man 
 melting in tears ! " What do I see ? " said she. — 
 " You see a friend weeping over his friend." — He 
 ^ In the year 630. Tabuc is a valley in Arabia. 
 
 I 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 99 
 
 went out for the last time into the mosque, two days 
 before his death ; asked, If he had injured any man ? 
 Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any 
 man ? A voice answered, " Yes, me three drachms," 
 borrowed on such an occasion. Mahomet ordered them 
 to be paid : " Better be in shame now," said he, " than 
 at the Day of Judgment." — You remember Kadijah, 
 and the " No, by AUah ! " Traits of that kind show 
 us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought 
 visible through twelve centuries, — the veritable Son 
 of our common Mother. 
 
 Withal I like Mahomet for his- total freedom from 
 cant. He is a rough self-helping son of the wilderness ; 
 does not pretend to be what he is not. There is no osten- 
 tatious pride in him ; but neither does he go much 
 upon humility : he is there as he can be, in cloak and 
 shoes of his own clouting ; speaks plainly to all man- 
 ner of Persian Kings, Greek Emperors, what it is they 
 are bound to do ; knows well enough, about himself, 
 ' the respect due unto thee.' In a life-and-death war 
 with Bedouins, cruel things could not fail ; but neither 
 are acts of mercy, of noble natural pity and generos- 
 ity wanting. Mahomet makes no apology for the one, 
 no boast of the other. They were each the free dictate 
 of his heart; each called-for, there and then. Not a 
 mealy-mouthed man ! A candid ferocity, if the case 
 call for it, is in him ; he does not mince matters ! The 
 War of Tabuc is a thing he often speaks of : his men 
 refused, many of them, to march on that occasion ; 
 pleaded the heat of the weather, the harvest, and so 
 forth ; he can never forget that. Your harvest ? It 
 lasts for a day. What will become of your harvest 
 
100 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 through all Eternity ? Hot weather ? Yes, it was hot ; 
 ' but Hell will be hotter ! ' Sometimes a rough sar- 
 casm turns-up : He says to the unbelievers, Ye shall 
 have the just measure of your deeds at that Great 
 Day. They wall be weighed-out to you ; ye shall not 
 have short weight ! — Everywhere he fixes the matter 
 in his eye ; he sees it : his heart, now and then, is as 
 if struck dumb by the greatness of it. ' Assuredly,' he 
 says : that word, in the Koran, is written-down some- 
 times as a sentence by itself : ' Assuredly.' 
 
 No Dilettantism in this Mahomet ; it is a busi- 
 ness of Reprobation and Salvation with him, of Time 
 and Eternity : he* is in deadly earnest about it ! 
 Dilettantism, hypothesis, speculation, a kind of ama- 
 teur-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 vain show.' Such a man not only utters and pro- 
 duces falsehoods, but is himself a falsehood. The ra- 
 tional moral principle, spark of the Divinity, is sunk 
 deep in him, in quiet paralysis of life-dedth. The 
 very falsehoods of Mahomet are truer than the truths 
 of such a man. He is the insincere man : smooth- 
 polished, respectable in some times and places ; 
 inoffensive, says nothing harsh to anybody ; most 
 cleanly^ — just as carbonic acid is, which is death and 
 poison, 
 
 ^ As Carlyle uses this word, in the sense of dabbling frivo- 
 lously or carelessly with things that ought to be taken seriously, 
 it is quite far away from the original sense of dilettante, a 
 delighter in fine art, etc. 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 101 
 
 We will not praise Mahomet's moral precepts as 
 always of the superfinest sort ; yet it can be said that 
 there is always a tendency to good in them ; that they 
 are the true dictates of a heart aiming towards what 
 is just and true. The sublime forgiveness of Chris- 
 tianity, turning of the other cheek when the one has 
 been smitten, is not here : you are to revenge your- 
 self, 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 Af men : the soul of one believer 
 outweighs all earthly kingships ; all men, according 
 to Islam too, are equal. Mahomet insists not on the 
 propriety of giving ahns, but on the necessity of it : 
 he marks-down by law how much you are to give, and 
 it is at your peril if you neglect. The tenth part of 
 a man's annual income, whatever that may be, is the 
 jpropcrty of the poor, of those that are afflicted and 
 need help. Good all this : the natui'al voice of hu- 
 manity, of pity and equity dwelling in the heart of 
 this wild Son of Nature speaks so. 
 
 Mahomet's Paradise is sensual, his Hell sensual : 
 true ; in the one and the other there is enough that 
 shocks all spiritual feeling in us. But we are to 
 recollect that the Ai-abs already had it so ; that Ma- 
 homet, in whatever he changed of it, softened and 
 diminished all this. The worst sensualities, too, are 
 the work of doctors, followers of his, not his work. 
 In the Koran there is really very little said about the 
 joys of Paradise ; they are intimated rather than in- 
 sisted on. Nor is it forgotten that the highest joys 
 even there shall be sj)iritual ; the pure Presence of 
 
102 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 the Highest, this shall infinitely transcend all other 
 joys. He says, ' Your salutation shall be, Peace.' 
 Salam, Have Peace ! — the thing that all rational 
 souls long for, and seek, vainly here below, as the one 
 blessing. ' Ye shall sit on seats, facing one another : 
 all grudges shall be taken away out of your hearts.' 
 All grudges ! Ye shall love one another freely ; for 
 each of you, in the eyes of his brothers, there wiU be 
 Heaven enough ! 
 
 In reference to this of the sensual Paradise and 
 Mahomet's sensuality, the sorest chapter of all for us, 
 there were many things to be said ; which it is not 
 convenient to enter upon here. Two remarks only I' 
 shall make, and therewith leave it to your candour. 
 The first is furnished me by Goethe ; it is a casual 
 hint of his which seems well worth taking note of. In 
 one of his Delineations, in Meisters Travels it is, the 
 hero comes-upon a Society of men with very strange 
 ways, one of which was this : " We require," says the 
 Master, " that each of our people shall restrict himself 
 in one direction," shall go right against his desire in 
 one matter, and make himself do the thing he does 
 not wish, "should we allow him the greater latitude on 
 all other sides." There seems to me a great justness 
 in this. Enjoying things which are pleasant ; tliat 
 is not the evil : it is the reducing of our moral self to 
 slavery by them that is. Let a man assert withal that 
 he is king over his habitudes ; that he could and 
 would shake them off, on cause shown : this is an excel- 
 lent law. The Month Ramadhan for the Moslem, 
 much in Maliomet's Religion, much in his own Life, 
 bears in that direction ; if not by forethought, or clear 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 103 
 
 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 Ma- 
 hometan Heaven and Hell. This namely, that, however 
 gross and material they may be, they are an emblem 
 of an everlasting 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 Bedouin imagination, 
 of that grand sjjiritual Fact, and Beginning of Facts, 
 which it is ill for us too if we do not all know and feel : 
 the Infinite Nature of Duty ? That man's actions here are 
 of infinite 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 threescore 
 years of Time holds an Eternity fearfully and wonder- 
 fully hidden : all this had burnt itself, as in flame- 
 characters, into the wild Arab soul. As in flame and 
 lightning, it stands written there ; awful, unspeakable, 
 ever present to him. With bursting earnestness, with 
 a fierce savage sincerity, half -articulating, not able to 
 articulate, he strives to speak it, bodies it forth in that 
 Heaven and that Hell. Bodied forth in what way you 
 will, it is the first of all truths. It is venerable under all 
 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 
 Bentham,! a Paley,^ take Right and Wrong, and cal- 
 
 ^ Utilitarian philosopher (1748-1832). 
 
 2 English clergyman (1743-1805), expounder of utilitarian 
 morals. 
 
104 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 culate the profit and loss, ultimate pleasure of the one 
 and of the other ; and summing all up by addition and 
 subtraction into a net result, ask you. Whether on the 
 whole the Kight does not preponderate considerably? 
 No ; it is not better to do the one than the other : the 
 one is to the otlier as life is to death, — as Heaven is to 
 Hell. The one must in nowise be done, the other in no- 
 wise left undone. You shall not measure them ; they are 
 incommensurable : the one is death eternal to a man, 
 the other is life eternal. Benthamee Utility, virtue by 
 Profit and Loss ; ^ reducing this God's-world to a dead 
 brute Steam-engine, the infinite celestial Soul of Man 
 to a kind of Hay-balance for weighing hay and thistles 
 on, pleasures and pains on : — If you ask me which 
 gives, Mahomet or they, the beggarlier and falser view 
 of Man and his Destinies in this Universe, I will an- 
 swer. It is not Mahomet ! 
 
 On the whole, we will repeat that this Religion of Ma- 
 homet's is a kind of Christianity ; has a genuine ele- 
 ment of what is si^irituaUy highest looking through it, 
 riot to be hidden by aU its imperfections. The Scandi- 
 navian God WisJi, the god of all rude men, — this has 
 been enlai-ged 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, and a truly celestial element superadded to 
 that. Call it not false ; look not at the falsehood of it, 
 
 ^ " Utility the test and measure of virtue," " the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number," are phrases of Benthamee 
 utility. One of Bentham's books is The Theory of Penalties and 
 Rewards (1811). 
 
THE HERO AS PROPHET 105 
 
 look at the truth of it. For these twelve centuries, it 
 has been the religion and life-gTiidance of the fifth part 
 of the whole kindred of Mankind. Above all things, 
 it has been a religion heartily believed. These Arabs 
 believe their religion, and try to live by it ! No Chris- 
 tians, since the early ages, or only perhaps the English 
 Puritans in modern times, have ever stood by their 
 Faith as the Moslem do by theirs, — believing it wholly, 
 fronting Time with it, and Eternity with it. This night 
 the watchman on the streets of Cairo when he cries, 
 " Who goes ? " will hear from the passenger, along 
 with his answer, "There is no God but God." Allah 
 akhat\ Islam, sounds through the souls, and whole 
 daily existence, of these dusky millions. Zealous 
 missionaries preach it abroad among Malays, black 
 Papuans, brutal Idolaters ; — displacing what is worse, 
 nothino; that is better or oood. 
 
 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 des- 
 erts 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 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 jjreat, life-oivinsr. 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 
 
106 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 unnoticeable sand ; but lo, the sand proves explosive 
 powder, blazes heaven-high from Dellii to Grenada ! I 
 said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of 
 Heaven ; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and 
 then they too would flame. 
 
 I 
 
LECTURE III 
 
 THE HERO AS POET. DANTE; SHAKSPEARE 
 [Tuesday, 12th May, 18-40.] 
 
 The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are pro- 
 ductions of old ages ; not to be repeated in the new. 
 They 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. Divin- 
 ity and Prophet are past. We are now to see our Hero 
 in the less ambitious, but also less questionable, char- 
 acter of Poet ; a character which does not pass. The 
 Poet is a heroic figure belonging to all ages ; whom 
 all ages possess, when once he is produced, whom the 
 newest age as the oldest may produce ; — and v/ill pro- 
 duce, always when Nature pleases. Let Nature send a 
 Hero-soul ; in no age is it other than possible that he 
 may be shaped into a Poet. 
 
 Hero, Prophet, Poet, — many different names, in 
 different times and places, do we give to Great Men ; 
 according to varieties we note in them, according to 
 the sphere in which they have displayed themselves ! 
 We might give many more names, on this same prin- 
 ciple. I will remark again, however, as a fact not 
 
108 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 unimportant to be understood, that the different sjihere 
 constitutes the grand origin of such distinction ; that 
 the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what 
 you will, according to the kind of world he finds him- 
 self born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly 
 great man that could not be all sorts of men. The 
 Poet who cordd merely sit on a chair, and compose stan- 
 zas, 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 Tliinker, Legislator, Philosopher ; — in 
 one or the other degree, he could have been, he is all 
 these. So too I cannot understand how a Mirabeau, 
 with that great glowing heart, with the fire that was 
 in it, with the bursting tears that were in it, could not 
 have written verses, tragedies, poems, and touched all 
 hearts in that way, had his course of life and education 
 led him thitherward. The gi-and fundamental charac- 
 ter is that of Great Man ; that the man be gi-eat. 
 Napoleon has words in him which are like Austeilitz 
 Battles.^ Louis Fourteenth's ^ Marshals are a kind of 
 poetical men withal ; the things Turenne ^ says are full. 
 of sagacity and geniality, like sayings of Samuel John- 
 son. The great heart, the clear deep-seeing eye : there 
 it lies ; no man wliatever, in what jirovince soever, can 
 prosper at all without these. Petrarch and Boccaccio * 
 
 1 See p. 333, n. 4. ' See p. 255, ii. 1. 
 
 8 1611-1675; France's greatest general except Napoleon. 
 
 * The chief initiators of the revival of classical learning in the 
 fourteenth centnry. Boccaccio (1313-1375), hest known bj' his 
 Decameron, was the author of the earliest Life of Dante. Pe- 
 trarch (or Petrarca, 1304-1374), important as the first of modern 
 
THE HERO AS POET 109 
 
 did diplomatic messages, it seems, quite well : one can 
 easily believe it ; they had done things a little harder 
 than these! -Burns, a gifted song-writer, might have 
 made a still better Mirabeau. Shakspeare, — one 
 knows not wliat he could not have made, in the su- 
 preme degree. 
 
 True, there are aptitudes of Nature too. Nature 
 does not make all great men, more than allother men, 
 in the self-same mould. Varieties of aptitude doubtless ; 
 but infinitely more of circumstance ; and far oftenest 
 it is the latter only that are looked to. But It Is as 
 with common men In the learning of trades. You take 
 any man, as yet a vague capability of a man, who 
 could be any kind of craftsman ; and make him Into a 
 smith, a carpenter, a mason : he Is then and thence- 
 forth that and nothing else. And if, as Addison com- 
 plains, you sometimes see a street-porter staggering 
 under his load on spindle-shanks, and near at hand a 
 tailor with the frame of a Samson handling a bit of 
 cloth and small Whitechapel needle, — It cannot be 
 considered that aptitude of Nature alone has been con- 
 sulted here either ! — The Great Man also, to what 
 shall he be bound apprentice ? Given your Hero, Is 
 he to become Conqueror, King, Philosopher, Poet? 
 It Is an inexplicably complex controversial-calculation 
 between the world and him ! He will read the world 
 and Its laws ; the world with its laws will be there to 
 be read. What the world, on this matter, shall per- 
 mit and bid Is, as we said, the most important fact 
 about the world. — 
 
 classical scholars, is remembered mainly for his sonnets addressed 
 to Laura (cf. Rom. and Jul., II, iv, 41). 
 
110 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Poet and Prophet differ greatly in our loose modern 
 notions of them. In some old languages, again, the 
 titles are synonymous ; Vates means both Prophet 
 and Poet : and indeed at all times, Prophet and Poet, 
 well understood, have much kindred of meaning. 
 Fundamentally indeed they are still the same ; in 
 this most important respect especially. That they 
 have penetrated both of them into the sacred mystery 
 of the Universe ; what Goethe calls ' the open secret.' 
 "Which is the great secret?" asks one. — "The oj^en 
 secret," — open to all, seen by almost none! That 
 divine mystery, which lies everywhere in all Beings, 
 ' the Divine Idea of the World, that which lies at the 
 bottom of Appearance,' as Fichte ^ styles it ; of which 
 all Appearance, from the starry sky to the grass of 
 the field, but especially the Appearance of Man and 
 his work, is but the vesture, the embodiment that 
 renders it visible. This divine mystery is in all times 
 and in all places ; veritably is. In most times and 
 places it is greatly overlooked ; and the Universe, 
 definable always in one or the other dialect, as the 
 realised 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. 
 
 1 See p. 217, 218. 
 
 •^ Carlyle, as here, has a trick, sometimes perplexing to the 
 beginner, of introducing his own opinions and sayings as if 
 quoted from other (fictitious) persons, — most notable among 
 whom is Professor Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, whose " Life and 
 Opinions " constitute the subject matter of Sartor Resartus. 
 
 I 
 
THE HERO AS POET 111 
 
 Really a most mournful pity ; — a failure to live at all, 
 if we live otherwise ! 
 
 But now, I say, whoever may forget this divine 
 mystery, the Vates, whether Prophet or Poet, has pene- 
 trated 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 consent asked of hbn, 
 he finds himself living in it, bound to live in it. Once 
 more, here is no Hearsay, but a direct Insight and 
 Belief ; this man too could not help being a sincere 
 man ! Whosoever may live in the shows of things, it 
 is for him a necessity of nature to live in the very 
 fact of things. A man once more, in earnest with the 
 Universe, though aU others were but toying with it. 
 He is a Vates, first of all, in virtue of being sincere. 
 So far Poet and Prophet, participators in the ' open 
 secret,' are one. 
 
 With respect to their distinction again : The Vates 
 Prophet, we might say, has seized that sacred mystery 
 rather on the moral side, as Good and Evil, Duty and 
 Prohibition ; the Vates Poet on what the Germans 
 call the festhetic side, as Beautiful, and the like. The 
 one we may call a revealer of what we are to do, the 
 other of what we are to love. But indeed these two 
 provinces run into one another, and cannot be dis- 
 joined. The Prophet too has his eye on what we are 
 to love : how else shall he know what it is we are to 
 do ? The highest Voice ever heard on this earth said, 
 withal, " Consider the lilies of the field ; they toil not, 
 
112 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 neither do they spin : yet Solomon in all his glory was 
 not arrayed like one of these." ^ A glance, that, into 
 the deepest deep of Beauty. ' The lilies of the field,' 
 — dressed finer than earthly princes, sjaringing-np 
 there in the humble furrow-field ; a beautiful eye 
 looking-out on you, from the great inner Sea of 
 Beauty I How could the rude Earth make these if 
 her Essence, rugged as she looks and is, were not in- 
 wardly Beauty? In this point of view, too, a saying 
 of Goethe's, which has staggered several, may have 
 meaning: 'The Beautiful,' he intimates, 'is higher 
 than the Good ; the Beautiful includes in it the Good.' 
 The tme Beautifid ; which however, I have said some- 
 where, ' differs from the false as Heaven does from 
 Vauxhall ! ' ^ So much for the distinction and identity 
 of Poet and Prophet. — 
 
 In ancient and also in modern periods we find a 
 few Poets who are accounted perfect ; whom it were 
 a kind of treason to find fault with. This is note- 
 worthy ; this is right : yet in strictness it is only an 
 illusion. At bottom, clearly enough, there is no perfect 
 Poet ! A vein of Poetry exists in the hearts of all men ; 
 no man is made altogether of Poetry. We are all poets 
 when we read a poem well. The ' imagination that 
 shudders at the Hell of Dante,' is not that the same 
 faculty, weaker in degree, as Dante's own ? No one 
 but Shakspeare can embody, out of Saxo Grammati- 
 
 1 Sermon on the Mount, Matt, vi, 28-29. 
 
 ^ A famous place of amusement in London, on the Thames, 
 above Westminster, 1G61-1859. The Spectator, Xo. 383, "Sir 
 Roger at Vauxhall," and Vanity Fair, vol. i, ch. vi, give glimpses 
 of the amusements there. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 113 
 
 CMS, the story of Hamlet as Shakspeare did : but 
 every one models some kind of story out of it ; every 
 one embodies it better or worse. We need not spend 
 time in defining*. Where there 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 be- 
 come noticeable, will be called Poet by his neighbours. 
 World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for per- 
 fect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. 
 One who rises so far above the general level of Poets 
 will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet ; 
 as he ought to do. , And yet it is, and must be, an 
 arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some 
 touches of the Universal ; no man is wholly made of 
 that. Most Poets are very soon forgotten : but not the 
 noblest Shakspeare or Homer of them can be remem- 
 bered forever ; — a day comes when he too is not ! 
 
 Nevertheless, you wiU say, there must be a differ- 
 ence between true Poetry and true speech not poetical : 
 what is the difference ? On this point many things 
 have been written, especially by late German Critics, 
 some of which are not very intelligible at first. They 
 say, for example, that the Poet has an infinitude in 
 him ; communicates an UnendlicKkeit^ a certain charac- 
 ter of ' infinitude,' to whatsoever he delineates. This, 
 though not very precise, yet on so vague a matter is 
 worth remembering : if weU meditated, some meaning 
 will gradually be found in it. For my own part, I find 
 considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinction of 
 Poetry being metrical^ ha\dng music in it, being a Song. 
 Truly, if pressed to give a definition, one might say 
 
114 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 this as soon as anything else : If your dehneation be 
 authentically musical, musical not in word only, but 
 in heart and substance, in all the thoughts and utter- 
 ances of it, in the whole conception of it, then it will 
 be poetical ; if not, not. — Musical : how much lies in 
 that ! A musical thought is one spoken by a mind 
 that has penetrated into the inmost heart of the thing ; 
 detected the inmost mystery of it, namely the melody 
 that lies hidden in it ; the inward harmony of coher- 
 ence 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 goes deep. Who is 
 there that, in logical words, can express the effect mu- 
 sic has on us? A kind of inarticidate unfathomable 
 speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and 
 lets us for moments gaze into that ! 
 
 Nay all speech, .even the commonest speech, has 
 something of song in it : not a parish in the world but 
 has its parish-accent ; — the rhythm or tune to which 
 the people there sing what they have to say ! Accent 
 is a kind of chanting ; all men have accent of their 
 own, — though they only notice that of others. Ob- 
 serve too how all passionate language does of itself 
 become musical, — with a finer music than the mere 
 accent ; the speech of a man even in zealous anger be- 
 comes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. It 
 seems somehow the very central essence of us. Song ; 
 as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls ! The 
 primal element of us ; of us, and of all things. The 
 Greeks fabled of Sphere-Harmonies: it was the feel- 
 ing they had of the inner structure of Nature : that the 
 
THE HERO AS POET 115 
 
 soul o£ all her voices and utterances was perfect music. 
 Poetry, therefore, we will call musical Thought. The 
 Poet is he who thinks in that manner. At bottom, it 
 turns still on power of intellect ; it is a man's sin- 
 cerity and depth of vision that makes him a Poet. 
 See deep enough, and you see musically ; the heart 
 of Nature being everywhere music, if you can only 
 reach it. 
 
 The Vates Poet, with his melodious Apocalypse of 
 Nature, seems to hold a poor rank among us, in com- 
 parison with the Vates Prophet ; his function, and our 
 esteem of him for his function, alike slight. The Hero 
 taken as Divinity ; the Hero taken as Prophet ; then 
 next the Hero taken only as Poet : does it not look as 
 if our estimate of the Great Man, epoch after epoch, 
 were continually diminishing? We take him first for 
 a god, then for one god-inspired ; and now in the next 
 stage of it, his most miraculous word gains from us 
 only the recognition that he is a Poet, beautiful verse- 
 maker, man of genius, or suchlike ! — It looks so ; but 
 I persuade myself that intrinsically it is not so. If we 
 consider well, it will perhaps appear that in man still 
 there is the same altogether peculiar admiration for 
 the Heroic Gift, by what name soever called, that there 
 at any time was. 
 
 I should say, if we do not now reckon a Great Man 
 literally divine, it is that our notions of God, of the 
 supreme unattainable Fountain of Splendour, Wisdom, 
 and Heroism, are ever rising higher ; not altogether 
 that our reverence for these qualities, as manifested in 
 our like, is getting lower. This is worth taking thought 
 of. Sceptical Dilettantism, the curse of these ages, a 
 
116 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 curse wliicli will not last forever, does indeed in this 
 the highest province of human things, as in all pro- 
 vinces, make sad work ; and our reverence for great 
 men, all crippled, Winded, paralytic as it is, comes-out 
 in poor plight, hardly recognisable. Men worship tli(^ 
 shows of great men ; the most disbelieve that there is 
 any reality of great men to worship. The dreariest, fa- 
 talest faith ; believing which, one woidd literally desjjair - 
 of human things. Nevertheless look, for example, at 
 Napoleon ! A Corsican lieutenant of artillery ; that is 
 the show of 7ii7n : yet is he not obeyed, v:>orshij)2>ed after 
 his sort, as all the Tiaraed and Diademed of the world 
 put together could not be ? High Duchesses, and ostlers 
 of inns, gather round the Scottish rustic. Burns ; — a 
 strange feeling dwelling in each that they never heard 
 a man like this ; that, on the whole, this is the man ! 
 In the secret heart of these people it still diml}' reveals 
 itself, though there is no accredited way of uttering it 
 at present, that this rustic, with his black brows and 
 flashing sun-eyes, and strange words mo"vang laughter 
 and tears, is of a dignity far beyond all others, incom- 
 mensurable with all others. Do not we feel it so ? But 
 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 things^ so that a man acted on the impulse of that 
 only, and counted the other non-extant ; what a new 
 livelier feeling towards this Burns were it ! 
 
 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 ; 
 
THE HERO AS POET 111 
 
 really, if we will think of it, canonised, so that it is 
 impiety to meddle with them. The unguided instinct 
 of the world, working across all these perverse impedi- 
 ments, has arrived at such result. Dante and Shak- 
 speare are a peculiar Two, They dwell apart, in a 
 kind of royal solitude ; none equal, none second to 
 them : in the general feeling of the world, a certain 
 transcendentalism, a glory as of complete perfection, 
 invests these two. They are canonised, though no Pope 
 or Cardinals took hand in doing it I Such, in spite of 
 every perverting influence, in the most unheroic times, 
 is still our indestructible reverence for heroism. — We 
 will look a little at these Two, the Poet Dante and the 
 Poet Shakspeare : what little it is permitted us to say 
 here of the Hero as Poet will most fitly arrange itself 
 in that fashion. 
 
 Many volumes have been written by way of commen- 
 tary on Dante and his Book ; yet, on the whole, with 
 no great result. His Biography is, as it were, irrecov- 
 erably lost for us. An unimportant, wandering, sorrow- 
 stricken man, not 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 five centuries since he 
 ceased writing and living here. After all commentaries, 
 the Book itself is mainly what we know of him. The 
 Book ; — and one might add that Portrait commonly 
 attributed to Giotto, ^ which, looking on it, you cannot 
 
 1 Tlie most famous artist of his time (1276-1337), friend of 
 Dante. Wliat portrait Carlyle had in mind here it is impossible 
 (>; to say with certainty. The only portrait now "commonly at- 
 tributed to Giotto," was at that time unknown. See add. note. 
 
118 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 
 vacancy, with the simple laurel wound round it ; the 
 deatliless sorrow and pain, the known victory which 
 is also deathless ; — significant of the whole history of 
 Dante I I think it is the mournfulest face that ever 
 was painted from reality ; an altogether tragic, heart- 
 affecting face. There is in it, as a 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 hopeless pain. A soft 
 ethereal soul looking-out so stern, implacable, grim- 
 trenchant, as from imprisonment of thick-ribbed ice ! 
 Withal it is a silent pain too, a silent scornful one : 
 the lip is curled in a kind of godlike disdain of the 
 thing that is eating-out his heart, — as if it were 
 withal 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 unsur- 
 rendering battle, against the world. Affection all 
 converted into indignation : an implacable indignation ; 
 slow, 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 song.' 
 
 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 
 
 ^ His full name was Durante Alighieri, called Dante "for 
 short." 
 
DANTE ALI6HIERI 
 
 The Bargello Portrait 
 
 Drawn by Mr. Seymour Kirkup before it was retouched by Manni. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 119 
 
 year 1265. His education was the best then going ; 
 much school-divinity, Aristotelean logic, some Latin 
 classics, — no inconsiderable insight into certain pro- 
 vinces 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 realise fi'om these 
 scholastics. He knows accurately and well what lies 
 close to him ; but, in such a time, without printed 
 books or free intercourse, he could not know well what 
 was distant : the small clear light, most luminous for 
 what is near, breaks itself into singular chiaroscuro 
 striking on what is far off. This was Dante's learning 
 from the schools. In life, he had gone through the 
 usual destinies ; been twice out campaigning as a 
 soldier for the Florentine State, been on embassy ; 
 had in his thirty-fifth year, by natural gradation of 
 talent and service, become one of the Chief Magistrates 
 of Florence. He had met in boyhood a certain Beatrice 
 Portinari,^ a beautiful little girl of his own age and 
 rank, and grown-up thenceforth in partial sight of her, 
 in some distant intercourse with her. All readers 
 know his graceful affecting account of this ; and 
 then of their being parted ; of her being wedded to 
 
 ^ The tradition that Beatrice was of the Portinari family dates 
 from Boccaccio's Life of Dante. Modern scholarship is inclined 
 to doubt the authority of that statement, and accordingly of 
 other statements frequently made about her, and even in fact 
 whether " Beatrice " was her real name or a poetical invention 
 of Dante. The story, "graceful, affecting" beyond almost all 
 else in literature, is beautifully told in La Vita Nuova (The 
 New Life), Dante's first book. 
 
120 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 another, and of her death soon after. She makes a 
 great figure in Dante's Poem ; seems to have made 
 a great figure hi his life. Of all beings it might seem 
 as if she, held apart from him, far apart at last in the 
 dim Eternity, were the only one he had ever with his 
 whole strength of affection loved. She died : Dante 
 himself was wedded ; but it seems not happily, far 
 from happily.^ I fancy, the rigorous earnest man, with 
 his keen excitabilities, was not altogether easy to make 
 happy. 
 
 We will not complain of Dante's miseries : had all 
 gone right with him as he wished it, he might have 
 been Prior,^ Podesta, or whatsoever they call it, of 
 Florence, weU accepted 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 ten dumb centuries 
 continued voiceless, and the ten other listening centu- 
 ries (for there will be ten of them and more) had no 
 Divina Commedia to hear ! We will complain of 
 nothing. A nobler destiny was appointed for this 
 Dante ; and he, struggling like a man led towards 
 death and crucifixion, 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. 
 
 ^' Not altogether proven. The only evidence is the statement 
 of the gossiping Boccaccio, and the facts that no mention of his 
 wife occurs in Dante's works, and that she did not accompany 
 hira into exile. 
 
 2 He was Prior for one term (two months) in 1300, but not 
 Podestk, a higher rank in the Florentine municipal govern- 
 ment. See next paragraph. 
 
THE HERQ AS POET 121 
 
 In Dante's Priorsliij), the Guelf-Ghibelline, Biauclii- 
 Neri,^ or some other confused disturbances rose to 
 such a height, that Dante, whose party had seemed the 
 stronger, was with his friends cast unexpectedly forth 
 into banishment ; doomed thenceforth to a life of woe 
 and wandering-. His property was all confiscated and 
 more ; he had the fiercest feeling that it was entirely 
 unjust, nefarious in the sight of God and man. He 
 tried what was in him to get reinstated ; tried even by 
 warlike surprisql, 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, doom- 
 ing this Dante, wheresoever caught, to be burnt alive. 
 Burnt alive ; so it stands, they say : a very curious 
 civic document. Another curious document, some con- 
 siderable number of years later, is a Letter of Dante's 
 to the Florentine Magistrates, written in answer to 
 a milder proposal of theii's, that he shoidd return 
 on condition of apologising and paying a fine. He 
 answers, with fixed stern pride : " If I cannot return 
 without calling myself guilty, I will never return, 
 nunquam revertary ^ 
 
 ^ The Guelphs and Gliibelllnes (the words derived from two 
 German family names) in medieval history were the parties 
 respectively of the Pope and the people, and the Emperor and 
 the aristocracy. The Guelph party in Florence, being in the 
 ascendency, became subdivided into Bianchi (Whites), the mod- 
 erate party, and Neri (Blacks), the violent. The Pope's inter- 
 ference on behalf of the Blacks resulted in the banishment from 
 Florence of tlie Whites, among whom was Dante (1302). 
 
 * Dated March 10, 1302, forty days after the sentence of 
 Dante and his fellow Priors to pay fines, upon conviction of 
 various crimes. 
 
 ^ Some doubt has been thrown on the authenticity of this letter. 
 
122 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 For Dante there was now no home in this world. 
 He wandei-ecl from patron to patron, from place to 
 place ; proving, in his own bitter words, ' How hard 
 is the path, Come e duro calle.^ ^ The wretched are 
 not cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, with 
 his jiroud earnest nature, with his moody humours, 
 was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of 
 him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed 
 one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in 
 no courtier-like way. Delia Scala ^ stood among his 
 courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (iiehidones ac his- 
 triones) making him heartily merry ; when turning to 
 Dante, he said : " Is it not strange, now, that this poor 
 fool should make himself so entertaining ; while you a 
 wise man sit there day after day, and have nothing to 
 amuse us with at all? " Dante answered bitterly : " No, 
 not strange ; your Highness is to recollect the Proverb, 
 Like to Lihe ; " — 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 suc- 
 ceed 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. 
 
 ^ Thou shalt have proof how savoreth of salt 
 The bread of others, and how hard a road 
 The going down and up another's stairs. 
 
 Par. XVII, 58-60. 
 
 (This and the following quotations are from Longfellow's trans- 
 lation.) 
 
 2 The name of the reigning family of Verona, 12G0-1387. 
 Daute's Patron became Lord of Verona in 1312. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 123 
 
 The deeper naturally would tlie Eternal World 
 impress itself on liina ; that awful raality over which, 
 after all, this Time-world, with its Florences and ban- 
 ishments, 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 ? 
 Eternity : 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. Bod- 
 ied or bodiless, 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 Malebolge ^ Pool, that it all lay there with its 
 gloomy circles, with its alti guai^^ and that he himself 
 should see it, than we doubt that we should see Con- 
 stantinople if we went thither. Dante's heart, long 
 filled with this, brooding over it in speechless thought 
 and awe, bursts forth at length into ' mj^stic ^ unfath- 
 
 ^ " Evil pouches." The graphic description of the place oc- 
 curs in Inf. xviii, Iff.: — 
 
 There is a place in Hell called Malebolge, 
 Wholly of stone and of an iron color, 
 As is the circle that around it turns. 
 2 " Deep groans," heard by Dante just within the gate of 
 Hell : — 
 
 There sighs, complaints, and ululations loud 
 Resounded through the air without a star, 
 Wlience I, at-the beginning, wept thereat. 
 
 Inf. m, 22-24. 
 ^ No better explanation of the meaning of this word could be 
 given than is contained in this paragraph. 
 
124 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 omable song ; ' and this his Divine Comedy^ the 
 most remarkable of all modern Books, is the result. 
 It must have been a great solacement to Dante, and 
 was, as we can see, a proud thought for him at times. 
 That he, here in exile, could do this work ; that no 
 Florence, nor no man or men, could hinder him from 
 doing it, or even much help him in doing it. He knew 
 too, partly, that it was great ; the greatest a man 
 could do. ' If thou follow thy star, Se tu segui tiia 
 Stella,^ ^ — so could the Hero, in his forsakenness, in 
 his extreme need, still say to himself : " Follow thou 
 thy star, thou shalt 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, 
 This Book, ' which has made me lean for many years.' ^ 
 
 ^ So entitled because, beginning in trouble and confusion in the 
 Inferno, it reaches a prosperous and happy issue in the Paradiso. 
 ^ The words of Dante's friend and teacher, Brunetto Latini, 
 vhom he finds in Hell : — 
 
 If thou thy star do follow, 
 Thou canst not fail thee of a glorious port, 
 If well I judged in the life beautiful. Inf. xv, 55-57. 
 He continues with an invective against the Florentines, and 
 Dante responds with a tender expression of gratitude for what 
 Latini taught him in life. 
 
 ^ If e'er it happen that the Poem Sacred, 
 
 To which both heaven and earth have set their hand, 
 So that it many a year hath made me lean, 
 O'ercome the cruelty that bars me out 
 
 From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered, 
 
 Poet will I return, and at my font 
 Baptismal will I take the laurel crown, 
 
 Par. XXV, 1-5, 8, 9. 
 Comp. last lines with nunquam reverter, p. 121. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 125 
 
 Ah yes, it was won, all of it, with pain and sore toil, 
 — not in sport, but in grim earnest. His Book, as 
 indeed most good Books are, has been written, in 
 many senses, with his heart's blood. It is his whole 
 history, this Book. He died after finishing it; not 
 yet very old, at the age of fif t3^-six ; — broken-hearted 
 rather, as is said. He lies buried in his death-city 
 Ravenna: Jlic claudor Dantes pCitriis extorris ah 
 oris. The Florentines begged back his body, in a 
 century after ; the Ravenna people would not give it. 
 " Here am I Dante laid, shut-out from my native 
 shores." ^ 
 
 I said, Dante's Poem was a Song : it is Tieck ^ who 
 calls it ' a mystic unfathomable Song ; ' and such is 
 literally the character of it. Coleridge remarks very 
 pertinently somewhere, that wherever you find a sen- 
 tence musically worded, of true rhythm and melody 
 in the words, there is something deep and good in the 
 meaning too. For body and soul, word and idea, go 
 strangely together here as everywhere. Song : we said 
 before, it was the Heroic of Speech ! All old Poems, 
 Homer's and the rest, are authentically Songs. I 
 would say, in strictness, that all right Poems are ; 
 that whatsoever is not sung is properly no Poem, but 
 a piece of Prose cramped into jingling lines, — to the 
 great injury of the grammar, to the great grief of the 
 reader, for most part ! What we want to get at is the 
 
 ^ Epitapli long supposed to have been composed by Dante 
 himself. Dante's remains disappeared from their resting-place 
 in Ravenna just before they were to be transferred to Florence 
 in 1519. They were rediscovered accidentally in 1865. 
 
 ^ German critic and poet (1773-1853) ; one of the founders 
 of the German Romantic School of literature. 
 
126 LECrmtES ON HEROES 
 
 thought the man had, if he had any : why should he 
 twist it into jingle, if he could speak it out plainly ? 
 It is only when the heart of him is rapt into true pas- 
 sion of melody, and the very tones of him, according 
 to Coleridge's remark, become musical by the great- 
 ness, depth and music of his thoughts, that we can 
 give him right to rhyme and sing ; that we call him a 
 Poet, and listen to him as the Heroic of Speakers, — 
 whose speech ?,s Song. Pretenders to this are many ; 
 and to an earnest reader, I doubt, it is for most part 
 a very melancholy, not to say an insupportable busi- 
 ness, that of reading rh^'uie I Khynie that had no in- 
 ward 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 can speak their thought, 
 not to sing it ; to understand that, in a serious time, 
 among serious men, there is no vocation in them for sing- 
 ing it. Precisely as we love the true song, and are 
 charmed by it as ^5y something di\ane, so shall we hate 
 the false song, and account it a mere wooden noise, a 
 thing hollow, superfluous, altogether an insincere and 
 offensive thing. 
 
 I give Dante my highest praise when I say of his 
 Divine Comedy that it is, in all senses, genuinely a 
 Song. In the very sound of it there is a canto fermo ; i 
 it proceeds as by a chant. The language, his simple 
 terza riina, ^ doubtless helped him in this. One reads 
 
 ^ In chiircli music, a " fixed song " (melody, or air) prescribed 
 by authority of the Church to be sung without change, with 
 whatever variations of harmony it might be accompanied. 
 
 " "Third rime." Dante's verse consists of eleven-syllable lines 
 with two-syllable rimes, alternate lines riming together in groups 
 of three, — aba bcb cdc ded, etc. See add. note. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 127 
 
 along naturally with a sort of lilt. But I add, that it 
 could not be otherwise ; for the essence and material 
 of the work are themselves rhythmic. Its depth, and 
 rapt passion and sincerity, makes it musical ; — go 
 deep enough, there is music everywhere. A true in- 
 ward symmetry, what one calls an architectural har- 
 mony, reigns in it, proportionates it all : architectural ; 
 which also partakes of the character of music. The 
 three kingdoms, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradlso, look- 
 out on one another like compartments of a great edi- 
 fice ; a great supernatural world-cathedral, piled-up 
 there, stern, solemn, awfid ; Dante's World of Souls ! 
 It is, at bottom, the sincerest of all Poems ; sincerity, 
 here too, we find to be the measure of worth. It came 
 deep oiit of the author's heart of hearts ; and it goes 
 deep, and tln'ough long generations, into ours. The 
 people of Verona, when they saw him on the streets, 
 used to say, " Eccovi V uom cli e siato all ' Inferjio, 
 See, there is the man that was in HeU ! " Ah yes, he 
 had been in HeU ; — in Hell enough, in long severe 
 sorrow and struggle ; as the like of him is pretty sure 
 to have been. Commedias that come-out divine are not 
 accomplished otherwise. Thought, true labour of any 
 kind, highest virtue itself, is it not the daughter of 
 Pain ? Born as out of the black whirlwind ; — true 
 effort, in fact, as of a captive struggling to free him- 
 self : that is Thought. In aU ways we are ' to become 
 perfect through svjfering.'' ^ — But, as I say, no work 
 known to me is so elaborated as this of Dante's. It has 
 
 ^ For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are 
 all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain 
 of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Heb. ii, 10. 
 
128 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 all been as if molten, in the hottest furnace of his sonl. 
 It had made him ' lean ' for many years. Not the gen- 
 eral whole only ; every compartment of it is worked- 
 out, with intense earnestness, into truth, into clear 
 visuality. Each answers to the other ; each fits in its 
 place, like a marble stone accurately hewn and pol- 
 ished. It 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 do7ie. 
 
 Perhaps one would say, intensity, with the much 
 that depends on it, is the prevailing character of Dante's 
 genius. Dante does not come before us as a large catho- 
 lic mind, rather a narrow, and even sectarian mind : 
 it is partly the fruit of his age and position, but partly 
 too of his own nature. His greatness has, in all senses, 
 concentered itself into fiery emphasis and depth. He 
 is world-great not because he is world-wide, but because 
 he is world-deep. Through all objects he pierces as it 
 were down into the heart of Being. I know nothing so 
 intense as Dante. Consider, for example, to begin with 
 the outermost development of his intensity, consider 
 how he paints. He has a great power of vision ; seizes 
 the very type of a thing ; presents that and nothing 
 more. You remember that first view he gets of the 
 Hall of Dite : ^ red pinnacle, redhot cone of iron glow- 
 ing through the dim immensity of gloom ; — so vivid, 
 so distinct, visible at once and forever ! It is as an 
 
 ^ Its mosques already, Master, clearly 
 Within there in the valley I discern 
 Vermilion, as if issuing from the fire 
 They were. Inf. viii, 70-73. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 129 
 
 emblem of the whole genius of Dante. There is a brev- 
 ity, an abrupt precision in him : Tacitus ^ is not briefer, 
 more condensed ; and then in Dante it seems a natu- 
 ral condensation, spontaneous to the man. One smit- 
 ing word ; and then there is silence, nothing more said. 
 His silence is more eloquent than words. It is strange 
 with what a sharp decisive grace he snatches the true 
 likeness of a matter : cuts into the matter as with a 
 pen of fire. Plutus, ^ the blustering giant, collapses at 
 Virgil's rebuke ; ^ it is ' as the sails sink, the mast be- 
 ing suddenly broken.' Or that poor Brunetto Latini, 
 with the cotto aspetto^ ' face haked^ parched, brown and 
 lean ; * and the ' fiery snow ' that falls on them there, 
 a ' fiery snow without wind,' slow, deliberate, never-end- 
 ing ! ^ Or the lids of those Tombs ; square sarcopha- 
 
 ^ Latin historian, c. 55-117. 
 
 2 The god of riches, jailer of the avaricious and prodigal in 
 Hell. 
 
 " Be silent, thou accursed wolf;" 
 
 Even as the sails inflated by the wind 
 
 Together fall involved when snaps the mast, 
 So fell the cruel monster to the earth. 
 
 Inf. vn, 8, 13-15. 
 
 And I, when he stretched forth his arm to me, 
 On his baked aspect fastened so mine eyes. 
 That the scorched countenance prevented not 
 
 His recognition by my intellect ; 
 
 And bowing down my face unto his own, 
 
 I made reply, "Are you here Ser Brunetto ? " 
 
 Inf. XV, 25-30. 
 
 O'er all the sand-waste, with a gradual fall, 
 Were raining down dilated flakes of fire, 
 As of the snow on Alp without a wind. 
 
 Inf XIV, 28-30. 
 
130 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 guses, in that silent dim-burning Hall, each with its Soul 
 in torment ; the lids laid open there ; they are to be 
 shut at the Day of Judgment, through Eternity. And 
 how Farinata rises ; and how Cavalcante falls — at 
 hearing of his Son, and the past tense '/'we'/^ The 
 very movements in Dante have something brief ; swift, 
 decisive, almost military. It 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 quick abrupt movements, its silent ' pale rages,' 
 speaks itself in these things. 
 
 1 For flames between the sepulchres were scattered, 
 By which they so intensely heated were, 
 That iron more so asks not any art. 
 All of their coverings uplifted were, 
 
 And from them issued forth such dire laments, 
 Sooth seemed they of the wretched and tormented. 
 
 Inf. IX, 118-123. 
 
 " Behold there Farinata who has risen ; 
 From the waist upwards wholly shalt thou see him." 
 I had already fixed mine eyes on his, 
 
 And he uproso erect with breast and front 
 
 E'en as if Hell ho had in great despite. Inf. x, 32-36. 
 
 " Where is my son ? and why is he not with thee ? " 
 And I to him [Cavalcante] : " I come not of myself ; 
 He who is waiting yonder leads me here, 
 Whom in disdain perhaps your Guido had." 
 
 Upstarting suddenly, he cried out : " How 
 Saidst thou, — he had ? Is he not still alive ? 
 Does not the sweet light strike upon his eyes ? " 
 When he became aware of some delay, 
 Which I before ni}' answer made, supine 
 He fell again and forth appeared no more. 
 
 Inf. X, 60-63, 67-72. 
 Carlyle's memory has substituted 'fue ' =was, for ' ehhe ' = had. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 131 
 
 For though this of painting is one of the outer- 
 most developments of a man, it comes like all else 
 from the essential faculty of him ; it is physiognomical 
 of the whole man. Find a man whose words paint 
 you a likeness; you have found a man worth some- 
 tliing ; mark his manner of doing it, as very charac- 
 teristic of him. In the first place, he could not have 
 discerned, the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, 
 unless he had, what we may call, sympathised with 
 it, — had sympathy ill him to bestow on objects. He 
 must have been siiicere about it too ; sincere and sym- 
 pathetic : a man without worth cannot give you the 
 likeness of any object ; he dwells in vague outward- 
 ness, fallacy and trivial hearsay, about all objects. 
 And indeed may we not say that intellect altogether 
 expresses itself in this power of discerning what an 
 object is ? Whatsoever of faculty a man's mind may 
 have will come out here. Is it even of business, a 
 matter to be done? The gifted man is he who sees 
 the essential point, and leaves aU the rest aside as 
 surplusage : it is his faculty too, the man of busi- 
 ness's faculty, that he discern the true likeness, not 
 the false superficial one, of the thing he has got to 
 work in. And how much of mo7'cility is in the kind 
 of insight we get of anything ; ' the eye seeing in all 
 things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing ' I 
 To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as 
 to the jaundiced they are yellow. Raphael, the Paint- 
 ers tell us, is the best of all Portrait-painters withal. 
 No most gifted eye can exhaust the significance of 
 any object. In the commonest human face there lies 
 more than Raphael will take-away with him. 
 
132 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Dante's painting is not graphic only, brief, true, 
 and of a vividness as of fire in dark night ; taken on 
 the wider scale, it is everyway noble, and the out- 
 come of a great soul. Francesca and her Lover, i what 
 qualities in that ! A thing woven as out of rain- 
 bows, 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 
 hella 2yerso7ia, che mifu 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 guai. And the 
 racking winds, in that aer bruno,^ whirl them away 
 again, to wail forever ! — Strange to think : Dante 
 was the friend of this poor Francesca's father ; * Fran- 
 cesca herself may have sat upon the Poet's knee, as a 
 
 ^ Paolo, Francesca da Rimini's lover, bad been deceitfully 
 pointed out to her as her future husband, and to him she gave 
 her love. Too late she found out that he had come only as 
 representative of his brother, an ill-appearing cripple, whom her 
 father caused her to marry. The husband, finding the lovers 
 together one day not long after, in a burst of jealous anger slew 
 them both. 
 
 * Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize, 
 
 Seized this m^i for the person beautiful 
 That was ta^ en from me, and still the mode offends me. 
 Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving. 
 Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly, 
 That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me; 
 Love has conducted us unto one death; 
 Caina waiteth him who quenched our life! 
 
 Inf. v, 100-107. 
 ^ "Brown air;" used to describe the approach of evening. 
 Inf. II, 1. Dante calls the air of this circle of Hell where carnal 
 sinners are punished aer maligna and tenehroso, v, 86, and vi, 11. 
 
 * Nephew, say later scholars. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 133 
 
 bright innocent little child. Infinite pity,^ yet also 
 infinite rigour of law : it is so Nature is made ; it is 
 so Dante discerned that she was made. What a paltry 
 notion is that of his Divine Comedy'' s being a poor 
 splenetic impotent terrestrial libel ; putting those into 
 Hell whom he could not be avenged-upon on earth ! 
 I suppose if ever pity, tender as a mother's, was in 
 the heart of any man, it was in Dante's. But a man 
 who does not know rigour cannot pity either. His 
 ver}" pity will be cowardly, egoistic, ■ — sentimentality, 
 or little better. I laiow not in the world an affection 
 equal to that of Dante. It is a tenderness, a trem- 
 bling, longing, pitying love : like the wail of ^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 
 
 ^ Francesca having told her story, the canto ends: — 
 And all the while one spirit uttered this, 
 The other one did weep so, that, for pity, 
 I swooned away as if I had been dying, 
 And fell, even as a dead body falls. v, 139-142. 
 
 2 E. g., in Purg. xxvii, where Dante, fearing to pass through 
 the fire, is encouraged by Virgil: — 
 
 " Now look thou. Son, 
 'Twixt Beatrice and thee there is this wall." 
 
 Even thus, my obduracy being softened, 
 
 I turned to my wise Guide, hearing the name 
 That in my memory evermore is welling. 
 
 Whereat he wagged his head, and said : " How now ? 
 Shall we stay on this side ? " then smiled as one 
 Doth at a child who 's vanquished by an apple. 
 
134 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 in the Paradiso ; ^ his gazing in her pure transfig- 
 ured eyes,^ her that had been purified by deatli so 
 long, separated from him so far : — one likens it to 
 the song of angels ; it is among the purest utterances 
 of affection, perhaps the very purest, that ever came 
 out of a human soul. 
 
 For the intense Dante is intense in all things ; he 
 has got into the essence of all. His intellectual in- 
 sight as painter, on occasion too as reasoner, is but 
 the result of aU other sorts of intensity. Morally 
 great, above all, we must call him ; it is the begin- 
 ning of all. His scorn, his grief are as transcendent 
 as his love; — as indeed, what are they but the 
 
 And my sweet Father, to encourage me, 
 Discoursing still of Beatrice went on, 
 Saying : " Her eyes I seem to see already ! " 
 
 35, 36, 40-45," 52-54. 
 
 ^ Their first meeting is in the Earthly Paradise, on the top of the 
 Mountain of Purgatory (Purg. xxx), where, altliongh her face is 
 veiled, Dante's spirit " Of ancient love the mighty influence felt." 
 * So steadfast and attentive were mine eyes 
 In satisfying their decennial thirst. 
 That all my otlier senses were extinct, 
 And upon this side and on that they had 
 Walls of indifference, so the holy smile 
 Drew them unto itself with the old net. 
 
 Pitrg. xxxil, 1-6. 
 
 Virgil, who has guided Dante through Hell and Purgatory, 
 leaves him, for the last third of his journey, to Beatrice, wlio 
 is portrayed in the Paradiso with constantly increasing beauty 
 and splendor. Dante abundantly fulfills the promise at the end 
 of the Vita Nuova : " So that if it shall be the pleasure of Him, 
 through whom all things live, that my life shall continue some- 
 what longer, I hope to say of her what never yet was said of 
 any woman." 
 
THE HERO AS POET 135 
 
 inverse or converse of his love? ^ A Dlo spiacentl ed 
 a' nemicl sui, Hateful to God and to the enemies of 
 God:' lofty scorn, unappeasable silent rejarobation and 
 aversion ; ' JVbn ragionam di lor^ We will not speak 
 of them, look only and pass.' Or think of this ; 
 ' They have not the hope to die, Non han spcranza 
 di morte.'' ^ One day, it had risen sternly benign on 
 the scathed heart of Dante, that he, wretched, never- 
 resting, worn as he was, would full surely die ; ' that 
 Destiny itself could not doom him not to die.' Such 
 words are in this man. For rigour, earnestness and 
 depth, he is not to be paralleled in the modern world ; 
 to seek his parallel we must go into the Hebrew 
 Bible, and live with the antique Prophets there. 
 
 I do not agree with much modern criticism, in greatly 
 preferring the Inferno to the two other parts of the 
 Divine Commedia. Such preference belongs, I imag- 
 ine, to our general Byronism of taste, and is like to 
 be a transient feeling. The Pnrgatorio and Paradiso, 
 especially the former, one would almost say, is even 
 more excellent than it. It is a noble things that Pur- 
 gatorio, ' Mountain of Purification ; ' an emblem of 
 the noblest conception of that age. If Sin is so fatal, 
 and Hell is and must be so rigorous, awfiil, yet in 
 Repentance too is man purified; Repentance is the 
 grand Christian act. It is beautiful how Dante works 
 it out. The tremolar delV onde, that ' trembling ' of 
 
 ^ The three lines here quoted (/«/. iir, 63, 51, 46) relate to 
 
 " that caitiff choir 
 Of Angels, who have not rebellions been, 
 Nor faithful were to God, but were for self." 37-39. 
 Carlyle's lively sympathy with Dante's scorn reflects his own 
 uncompromising positiveness. 
 
136 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 the ocean-waves, under the first pure gleam of morn- 
 ing, 1 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 dcemons and re- 
 probate is underfoot ; a soft breathing of penitence 
 mounts higher and higher, to the Throne of Mercy it- 
 self. " Pray 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 mother 
 loves me no more ! " ^ They toil painfully up by that 
 winding steep, ' bent-down like corbels of a build- 
 ing, ' 3 some of them, — crushed-together so ' for the 
 sin of pride ; ' yet nevertheless in years, in ages and 
 seons, they shall have reached the top, which is 
 Heaven's gate, and by Mercy shall have been ad- 
 mitted in. The joy too of all, when one has prevailed; 
 
 ^ The dawn was vanquishing the matin hour 
 Which fled before it, so that from afar 
 I recognized the trembling of the sea. 
 
 Purg. 1, 115-117. 
 2 When thou shalt be beyond the waters wide, 
 Tell my Giovanna that she pray for me, 
 Where answer to the innocent is made. 
 I do not think her mother loves me more, 
 Since she has laid aside her wimple white, 
 Which she, unhappy, needs must wish again. 
 
 Purg. VIII, 70-72. 
 ' As to sustain a ceiling or a roof, 
 
 In place of corbel, oftentimes, a figure 
 Is seen to join its knees unto its breast, 
 Which makes of the unreal real anguish 
 Arise in him who sees it; fashioned thus 
 Beheld I those, when I had ta'en good heed. 
 
 Purg. X, 130-135. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 137 
 
 the whole Mountain shakes with joy, and 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. 
 
 But indeed the Three compartments mutually sup- 
 port one another, are indispensable to one another. 
 The I^aradiso, a kind of inarticulate music to me, is 
 the redeeming side of the Inferno ; the Inferno with- 
 out it were untrue. All three make-up the true 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 brief simplicity 
 he passes out of the every-day reality, into the Invis- 
 ible one; and in the second or third stanza, we find 
 ourselves in the World of Spirits ; and dwell there, as 
 among things palj)able, indubitable ! To Dante they 
 were so ; the real world, as it is called, and its facts, 
 was but the threshold to an infinitely higher Fact of 
 a World. At bottom, the one was as ^;)reiernatural as 
 the other. Has not each man a soul? He will not 
 only be a- spirit, but is one. To the earnest Dante it 
 is all one visible Fact ; he believes it, sees it ; is the 
 Poet of it in virtue of that. Sincerity, I say again, is 
 the saving merit, now as always. 
 
 ^ Purg. XX (124-141) tells of the occurrence; xxi gives the 
 explanation : — 
 
 *' It trembles here, whenever any soul 
 
 Feels itself pure, so that it soars, or moves 
 
 To mount aloft, and such a cry attends it. 58-60. 
 
138 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Dante's Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, are a sjTnbol 
 withal, an emblematic representation of his Belief 
 about this Universe : — some Critic in a future ac"e, 
 like those Scandinavian ones the other day, who has 
 ceased altogether to think as Dante did, may find this 
 too all an ' Allegory,' jDcrhaps an idle Allegory ! It is 
 a sublime embodiment, or sublimest, of the soul of 
 Christianity. It expresses, as in huge worldwide archi- 
 tectural emblems, how the Christian Dante felt Good 
 and Evil to be the two polar elements of this Creation, 
 on which it all turns ; that these two differ not by 
 prefcrahUiti/ of one to the other, but by incompatibility 
 absolute and infinite ; that the one is excellent and 
 high as light and Heaven, the other hideous, black as 
 Gehenna and the Pit of Hell I Everlasting Justice, 
 yet with Penitence, with everlasting Pity, — all Chris- 
 tianism, as Dante and the Middle Ages had it, is 
 emblemed here. Emblemed : and yet, as I urged the 
 other day, with what entire truth of purpose ; how 
 unconscious of any embleming ! Hell, Pui'gatory, Para- 
 dise : these things were not fashioned as emblems ; 
 was there, in our Modern European Mind, any thought 
 at all of their being emblems I Were they not indubit- 
 able 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 do not 
 believe an Allegory. The future Critic, whatever his 
 new thought may be, who considers this of Dante to 
 have been all got-up as an AUegor}^, wiU commit one 
 sore mistake ! — Paganism we recognised as a veracious 
 expression of the earnest awe-struck feeling of man 
 towards the Universe ; veracious, true once, and still 
 
THE HERO AS POET 139 
 
 not without worth for us. But mark here the difference 
 of Paganism and Christianisui ; one great difference. 
 Paganism emblemed chiefly the Operations of Nature ; 
 the destinies, efforts, 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 ! — 
 
 And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent 
 centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The 
 Divhia Commedia is of Dante's writing ; yet in truth 
 it belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing 
 of it is Dante's. So always. The 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 inventive 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 beauti- 
 ful, are the fruit of the Christian Meditation of all 
 the good men who had gone before him. Precious 
 they ; but also is not he 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 once of one of the greatest human souls, and 
 of the highest thing that Europe had hitherto realised 
 
140 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 for itself ? Christianism, as Dante sings it, is another 
 than Paganism in the rude Norse mind ; another than 
 'Bastard Cliristianism ' half-articulately spoken in the 
 Arab Desert, seven-hundred years before ! — The noble 
 idea made real hitherto among men, is sung, and 
 emblemed-forth abidingly, by one of the noblest men. 
 In the one sense and in the other, are we not right 
 glad to possess it ? As I calculate, it may last yet for 
 long thousands of years. For the thing that is uttered 
 from the inmost parts of a man's soul, differs altogether 
 from what is uttered by the outer part. The outer 
 is of the day, under the empire of mode; the outer 
 passes away, in swift endless changes; the inmost is 
 the same yesterday, today and forever. True souls, 
 in all generations of the world, who look on this Dante, 
 will find a brotherhood in him ; the deep sincerity of 
 his thoughts, his woes and hopes, will speak likewise 
 to their sincerity ; they will feel that this Dante too 
 was a brother. Napoleon in Saint-Helena is charmed 
 with the genial veracity of old Homer. The oldest He- 
 brew Prophet, under a vesture the most diverse from 
 ours, does yet, because he speaks from the heart of 
 man, speak to all men's hearts. It is the one sole 
 secret of continuing long memorable. Dante, for depth 
 of sincerity, is like an antique Prophet too ; his words, 
 like theirs, come from his very heart. One need not 
 wonder if it were predicted that his Poem might " be 
 the most enduring thing our Europe has yet made ; 
 for nothing so endures as a truly spoken word. All 
 cathedrals, pontificalities, brass and stone, and outer 
 arrangement never so lasting, are brief in comparison 
 to an unfathomable heart-sonc like this : one feels as 
 
THE HERO AS POET 141 
 
 i£ it might survive, still of importance to men, when 
 these had all sunk into new irrecognisable combina- 
 tions, and had ceased individually to be, Europe has 
 made much ; great cities, great empires, encyclopaedias, 
 creeds, bodies of opinion and practice: but it has made 
 little of the class of Dante's Thought. Homer yet is, 
 veritably present face to face with every open soul of 
 us ; and Greece, where is it f Desolate for thousands 
 of years ; away, vanished ; a bewildered heap of stones 
 and rubbish, the life and existence of it all gone. 
 Like a dream ; like the dust of King Agamemnon ! 
 Greece was ; Greece, except in the words it spoke, is 
 not. 
 
 The uses of this Dante? We will not say much 
 about his ' uses.' A human soul who has once got into 
 that primal element of Song, and sung-forth fitly 
 somewhat therefrom, has worked in the dei^ths of our 
 existence ; feeding through long times the life-roo^s of 
 all excellent human things whatsoever, — in a way that 
 ' utilities ' will not succeed well in calcidating ! We 
 will not estimate the Sun by the quantity of gas-light 
 it saves us ; Dante shall be invaluable, or of no value. 
 One remark I may make : the contrast in this respect 
 between the Hero-Poet and the Hero-Prophet. In a 
 hundred years, Mahomet, as we saw, had his Arabians 
 at Grenada and at Delhi ; Dante's Italians seem to be 
 yet very much where they were. Shall we say, then, 
 Dante's effect on the world was small in comparison ? 
 Not so ; his arena is far more restricted ; but also it is 
 far nobler, clearer ; — perhaps not less but more im- 
 portant. Mahomet speaks to great masses of men, in 
 the coarse dialect adapted to such ; a dialect filled 
 
142 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 with inconsistencies, crudities, follies : on the great 
 masses alone can he act, and there with good and with 
 evil strangely blended. Dante speaks to the noble, the 
 pure and great, in all times and jilaces. Neither does 
 he grow obsolete, as the other does. Dante burns as 
 a pure star, fixed there in the firmament, at which the 
 great and the high of all ages kindle themselves : he 
 is the possession of all the chosen of the world for un- 
 counted time. Dante, one calculates, may long survive 
 Mahomet. In this way the balance may be made 
 straight again. 
 
 But, at any rate, it is not by what is called their 
 effect on the world, by what we can judge of their ef- 
 fect there, that a man and his work are measured. 
 Effect? Influence? Utility? Let a man f/o his work ; 
 the fruit of it is the care of Another than he. It will 
 grow its own fruit ; and whether embodied in Caliph 
 Thrones and Arabian Conquests, so that it ' fills all 
 Morning and Evening Newspapers,' and all Histories, 
 which are a kind of distilled Newspapers ; or not em- 
 bodied so at aU ; — what matters that ? That is not 
 the real fruit of it ! The Arabian Caliph, in so far only 
 as he did something, was something. If the great 
 Cause of Man, and Man's work in God's Earth, got 
 no furtherance from the Arabian Caliph, then no mat- 
 ter how many scimetars he drew, how many gold pias- 
 ters pocketed, and what uproar and blaring he made 
 in this world, — he was but a loud-sounding inanity 
 and futility ; at bottom, he was not at all. Let us honour 
 the great empire of Silence^ once more ! The boundless 
 treasury which we do not jingle in our pockets, or count 
 up and present before men ! It is perhaps, of all things, 
 
THE HERO AS POET 143 
 
 the usefiilest for each of us to do, in these loud 
 times. — — 
 
 As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world 
 to embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, 
 the Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life ; 
 so Shakspeare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer 
 Life of our Europe as developed then, its chivalries, 
 courtesies, humours, ambitions, what practical way of 
 thinking, acting, looking at the world, men then had. 
 As in Homer we may still construe Old Greece ; so in 
 Shakspeare and Dante, after thousands of years, what 
 our modern Eiu'ope was, in Faith and in Practice, will 
 stiU be legible. Dante has given us the Faith or Soul ; 
 Shakspeare, in a not less noble way, has given us the 
 Practice or body. This latter also we were to have ; a 
 man was sent for it, the man Shakspeare. Just when 
 that chivalry way of life had reached its last finish, and 
 was on the point of breaking down into slow or swift 
 dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other sov- 
 ereign Poet, with his seeing eyie, with his perennial 
 singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long- 
 enduring record of it. Two fit men : Dante, deep, fierce 
 as the central fire of the world ; Shakspeare, wide, pla- 
 cid, far-seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. 
 Italy produced the one world-voice; we English had 
 the honour of producing the other. 
 
 Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, 
 this man came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, 
 complete and self-sufficing is this Shakspeare, had the 
 Warwickshire Squire not prosecuted him for deer- 
 stealing, we had perhaps never heard of him as a 
 
144 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Poet ! The woods and skies, the rustic Life of Man 
 in Stratford there, had been enough for this man ! 
 But indeed that strange outbudding of our whole Eng- 
 lish Existence, which we call the Elizabethan Era, 
 did not it too come as of its own accord ? The ' Tree 
 Igdrasil ' buds and withers by its own laws, — too 
 deep for our scamiing. Yet it does bud and wither, 
 and every bough and leaf of it is there, by fixed eter- 
 nal laws ; not a Sir Thomas Lucy ^ but comes at the 
 hour fit for him. Curious, I say, and not sufficiently 
 considered : how ever}i:hing does cooperate with all ; 
 not a leaf rotting on the highway but is indissoluble 
 portion of solar and stellar systems ; no thought, word 
 or act of man but has sprung withal out of all men, 
 and works sooner or later, recognisably or irrecogiiis- 
 ably, on all men ! It is all a Tree : circulation of sap 
 and influences, mutual communication of every minut- 
 est leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every 
 other greatest and minutest portion of the whole. The 
 Tree Igdrasil, that has its roots down in the Kingdoms 
 of Hela and Death, and whose boughs overspread the 
 highest Heaven ! — 
 
 In some sense it may be said that this glorious Eliza- 
 bethan Era with its Shakspeare, as the outcome and 
 flowerage of all which had preceded it, is itself attri- 
 butable to the Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The 
 Christian Faith, which was the theme of Dante's 
 Song, had produced this Practical Life wliich Shak- 
 speare 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. A;id remark here, as rather curi- 
 ^ The " Warwickshire Squire " afore-mentioned. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 145 
 
 ous, tbat Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished, so 
 far as Acts of Parliament coidd abolish it, before 
 Shakspeare, the noblest product of it, made his ap- 
 jjearance. 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 Parliament. King-Henrys,^ Queen- 
 Elizabeths 1 go their way ; • and Nature too goes hers. 
 Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small, notwith- 
 standing the noise they make. What Act of Parlia- 
 ment, debate at St. Stephen 's,^ on the hustings ^ or 
 .elsewhere, was it that brought this Shakspeare into 
 being? No dining at Freemasons' Tavern,^ opening 
 subscription-lists, selling of shares, and infinite other 
 janghng and true or false endeavouring ! This Eliza- 
 bethan Era, and all its nobleness and blessedness, 
 came without proclamation, preparation of ours. Price- 
 less Shakspeare was the free gift of Nature ; given alto- 
 gether silently ; — received altogether silently, as if it 
 
 ^ Mentioned as effective opponents of Roman Catholicism in 
 England. 
 
 2 St. Stephen's Chapel, the site of which is now occupied by 
 St. Stephen's Hall in the Houses of Parliament, was once the 
 meeting-place of the House of Commons. 
 
 ^ " The temporary platform from which, previous to the Ballot 
 Act of 1872, the nomination of candidates for Parliament was 
 made, and on which these stood while addressing the electors." 
 New Eng. Diet. 
 
 ■* In London, where at a meeting of distinguished men includ- 
 ing Carlyle, six weeks after the delivery of the present lecture, 
 it was unanimously voted to establish a library. Subscription 
 lists were opened, etc. The project was most successfully car- 
 ried out. Obviously this sentence was added in preparing the 
 lecture for the press. 
 
146 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 had been a thing of little account. And yet, very lit- 
 erally, it is a priceless thing. One should look at that 
 side of matters too. 
 
 Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one 
 sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in 
 fact, the right one ; I tliink the best judgment not of 
 this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly 
 pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the 
 chief -of all Poets hitherto ; the gi-eatest 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 auy 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 from all other ' faculties ' as they are called, 
 an understanding manifested, equal to that in Bacon's 
 Novum Organimi. That is true ; and it is not a truth 
 that strikes every one. It would become more apparent 
 if we tried, any of us for himself, how, out of Shaks- 
 peare's dramatic materials, loe could fashion such a 
 result ! The built house seems all so fit, — everyway 
 as it should be, as if it came there by its own law and 
 the nature of things, — we forget the rude disorderly 
 quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of 
 the house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the 
 builder's merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other 
 man, we may call Shakspeare in this : he discerns, 
 knows as by instinct, what condition he works tmder, 
 what his materials are, what his own force and its 
 
THE HERO AS POET 147 
 
 relation to them is. It is not a transitory glance of 
 insight that will suffice ; it is deliberate illumination 
 of the. whole matter; it is a calmly seeing eye; a 
 great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide 
 thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative, 
 what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it, 
 — is the best measvire you could get of what intellect 
 is in the man. Which circumstance is vital and shall 
 stand prominent ; which unessential, fit to be sup- 
 pressed ; where is the true beginning^ the true sequence 
 and ending ? To find out this, you task the whole 
 force of insight that is in the man. He must under- 
 stand the thing ; according to the depth of his under- 
 standing, will the fitness of his answer be. You will 
 try him so. Does like join itself to like; does the 
 spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its 
 embroihnent becomes order ? Can the man say, Fiat 
 hiQC, Let there be light ; ^ and out of chaos make a 
 world ? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he 
 accomplish this. 
 
 Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called 
 Portrait-painting, delineating of men and things, 
 especially of men, that Shakspeare is great. All the 
 greatness of the man comes out decisively here. It is 
 unexampled, I think, that calm creative perspicacity 
 of Shakspeare. The thing he looks at reveals not this 
 or that face of it, but its inmost heart, and generic 
 secret : it dissolves itself as in light before him, so that 
 he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative, we 
 said : poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the 
 
 1 And God said, Let there be light : and there was light. 
 Gen. i, 3. 
 
148 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 tiling sufficiently? The toord that will describe the 
 thing, follows of itself from such clear intense sight of 
 the thing. And is not Shakspeare's morality^ his valour, 
 candour, tolerance, truthfulness ; his whole victorious 
 strength and greatness, which can triumph over such 
 ol)structions, \Tsible there too? Great as the world ! 
 No twisted^ poor convex-concave ^ mirror, reflecting all 
 objects with its owti convexities and concavities ; a per- 
 fectly level mirror ; — - that is to say withal, if we will 
 understand it, a man justly related to all things and 
 men, a good man. It is. truly a lordly spectacle how 
 this great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, 
 a Falstaff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus ; sets them 
 all forth to us in their round completeness ; loving, just, 
 the equal brother of all. JVovum Orgcauon, and all the 
 intellect you will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary 
 order ; earthly, material, poor in com2:)arison with this. 
 Among modern men, one finds, in strictness, almost 
 nothing of the same rank. Goethe alone, since the 
 days of Shakspeare, reminds me of it. Of him too you 
 say that he saio the object ; you may say what he him- 
 self says of Shakspeare : ' His characters are like 
 watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal ; they 
 show you the hour like others, and the inward mechan- 
 ism also is all visible.' 
 
 The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the inner 
 harmony of things ; what Nature meant, what musical 
 idea Nature has wrapped-up in these often rough em- 
 bodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing 
 eye that something were discernible. Are they base, 
 
 ^ I. e., some parts of the surface convex and others concave, 
 so that it would give an utterly distorted reflection. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 149 
 
 miserable things ? You can laugh over them, you can 
 weep over them ; you can in some way or other genially 
 relate 3'ourself to them ; — you can, at lowest, hold 
 your peace about them, turn away your own and others' 
 face from them, till the hour come for practically ex- 
 terminating and extinguishing them I At bottom, it is 
 the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have in- 
 tellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have : a Poet 
 in word ; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet 
 in act. Whether he write at all ; and if so, whether in 
 prose or in verse, wiU depend on accidents : who knows 
 on what extremely trivial accidents, — ■ perhaps on 
 his having had a singing-master, on his being taught 
 to sing in his boyhood ! But the faculty which enables 
 him to discern the inner heart of things, and the har- 
 mony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a har- 
 mony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together 
 and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but 
 the gift of Nature herself ; the primary outfit for a 
 Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to 
 every other, we say first of all. See. If you cannot do 
 that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, 
 jingling sensibilities against each other, and name your- 
 self a Poet ; there is no hope for you. If you can, there 
 is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner 
 of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, 
 when they brought him a new pupil, " But are ye sure 
 he's not a dunce? ^'' Why, really one might ask the 
 same thing, in regard to every man proposed for what- 
 soever function ; and consider it as the one inquiry 
 needful : Are ye sure he 's not a dunce ? There is, in 
 this world, no other entirely fatal person. 
 
150 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in 
 a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to 
 define Shakspeare's faculty, I should say superiority 
 of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. 
 What indeed are faculties ? We talk of faculties as if 
 they were distinct, things separable ; as if a man had 
 intellect, imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet 
 and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we 
 hear of a man's ' intellectual nature,' and of his 
 ' moral nature,' as if these again were divisible, and 
 existed apart. Necessities of langaiage do perhaps 
 prescribe such forms of utterance ; we must speak, I 
 am aware, in that way, if we are to s])eak at all. But 
 words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems 
 to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most 
 part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know 
 withal, and to keep forever in mind, that these divi- 
 sions are at bottom but names ; that man's spiritual 
 nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essen- 
 tially one and indivisible ; that what we caU imagina- 
 tion, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are but 
 different figures of the same Power of Insight, all 
 indissolubly connected with each other, physiognomi- 
 caUy related ; that if we knew one of them, we might 
 know all of them. Morality itself, what we call the 
 moral quality of a man, what is this but another 
 side of the one vital Force whereby he is and works ? 
 All that a man does is physiognomical of him. 
 You may see how a man would fight, by the way in 
 which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is 
 visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he has 
 formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is 
 
THE HERO AS POET 151 
 
 one ; and preaches the same Self abroad in all these 
 ways. 
 
 Without hands a man might have feet, and could 
 stiU walk : but, consider it, — without morality, intel- 
 lect were impossible for him ; a thoroughly immoral 
 man could not know anything at all ! To know a 
 thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first 
 love the thing, sympathise with it : that is, be virtu- 
 ously related to it. If he have not the justice to put 
 down his own selfishness at every turn, the courage to 
 stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall 
 he know ? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded 
 in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to 
 the bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever 
 a sealed book : what such can know of Nature is mean, 
 superficial, small ; for the uses of the day merely. 
 — But does not the very Fox know something of Na- 
 tui-e ? Exactly so : it knows where the geese lodge ! 
 The hmnan Reynard, very frequent everywhere in the 
 world, what more does he know but this and the like 
 of this ? Nay, it shoidd be considered too, that if the 
 Fox had not a certain vulpine morality, he could not 
 even know v^^here the geese were, or get at the geese ! 
 If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections 
 on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune 
 and other Foxes, and so forth ; and had not courage, 
 promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine 
 gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may 
 say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are 
 of the same dimensions ; different faces of the same 
 internal unity of vulpine life ! — These things are 
 worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with 
 
152 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 manifold very baleful perversion, in this time : what 
 limitations, modifications they require, your own can- 
 dour will supply. 
 
 If 1 say, therefore, that Shakspeare is the gi-eatest 
 of Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But 
 there is more in Shakspeare's intellect than we have 
 yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect ; 
 there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. 
 Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas 
 of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature 
 herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shak- 
 speare's Art is not Artifice ; the noblest worth of it 
 is not there by plan or precoutrivance. It grows-up 
 from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere 
 soul, who is a voice of Nature. The latest generations 
 of men will find new meanings in Shakspeare, new 
 elucidations of their own human being ; ' new har- 
 monies with the infinite structure of the Universe ; 
 concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the 
 higher powers and senses of man.' This well deserves 
 meditating. It is Nature's highest reward to a true 
 simple great soul, that he get thus to be a 2>art of 
 herself. Such a man's works, whatsoever he with ut- 
 most conscious exertion and forethought shall accom- 
 plish, grow up withal ?/7?conscio«sly, from the unknown 
 deeps in him ; — as the oak-tree grows from the 
 Earth's bosom, as the mountains and waters shape 
 themselves ; with a symmetry grounded on Natm-e's 
 own laws, comformable to all Truth whatsoever. How 
 much in Shakspeare lies hid ; his sorrows, his silent 
 struggles known to himself ; much that was not 
 known at all, not speakable at all : like roots, like 
 
THE HERO AS POET 153 
 
 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 first, indispens- 
 able thing. Yet I call Shakspeare greater than Dante, 
 in that he fought truly, and did conquer. Doubt it 
 not, he had his own sorrows : those Sonnets of his 
 will even testify expressly in what deep waters he had 
 waded, and swum struggling for his life ; — as what 
 man like him ever failed to have to do ? It seems to 
 me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat 
 like a bird on the bough ; and sang forth, free and 
 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, how could a man delineate a 
 Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many suffering 
 heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never suffered ? 
 — And now, in contrast with all this, observe his 
 mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laugh- 
 ter ! You would say, in no point does he exaggerate 
 but only in laughter. Fieiy objurgations, words that 
 pierce and burn, are to be found in Shakspeare ; yet 
 he is always in measure here ; never what Johnson 
 would remark as a specially ' good hater.' But his 
 laughter seems to pour from him in floods ; he heaps 
 all manner of ridicidous nicknames on the butt he 
 is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all sorts of 
 horse-play ; you would say, with his whole heart laughs. 
 And then, if not always the finest, it is always a 
 
154 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or 
 poverty ; never. No miin who can laugh, what we call 
 laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor 
 character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit 
 of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy ; 
 good laughter is not ' the crackling of thorns under 
 the pot.' ^ Even at stupidity and pretension this Shak- 
 speare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dog- 
 berry and Verges ^ tickle our very hearts ; and we 
 dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter : but 
 we like the poor fellows only the better for our laugh- 
 ing ; and hope they will get on well there, and con- 
 tinue Presidents of the City-watch. Such laughter, like 
 sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me. 
 
 We have no room to speak of Shakspeare's individ- 
 ual works ; though perhaps there is much still waiting 
 to be said on that head. Had we, for instance, all his 
 plays reviewed as Hamlet, in Wilhehn Meister^ 
 is ! A thing which might, one day, be done. August 
 Wilhehn Schlegel* has a remark on his Historical 
 Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, which is worth 
 rememberuig. He calls them a kind of National Epic. 
 Marlborough,^ you recollect, said, he knew no English 
 
 ^ For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter 
 of the fool : this also is vanity. Eccles. vii, 6. 
 
 2 In Much Ado, esp. in, iii, first part, — one of the best bits 
 of " laughter " in all literature. 
 
 8 In Meister^s Apprenliceship, Book iv, iii-v, xii, passim. 
 
 * Eminent German critic and poet (1767-1845). 
 
 * Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722), commander of the allied 
 forces against France, 1702-1711. Won the important victory 
 of Blenheim, 1704. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 155 
 
 History but what he had learned from Shakspeare. 
 There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable 
 Histories. The great salient points are admirably 
 seized ; all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic 
 colierence ; it is, as Schlegel says, epic ; — as indeed 
 all delineation by a great thinker will be. There are 
 right beautiful things in those Pieces, which indeed 
 together form one beautiful thinar. That battle of 
 Agin court ^ strikes me as one of the most perfect 
 things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shaksjjeare's. 
 The description of the two hosts : the worn-out, jaded 
 English ; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the 
 battle shall begin ; and then that deathless valour : 
 " Ye good yeomen, whose limbs were made in Eng- 
 gland I " 2 There is a noble Patriotism in it, — far 
 other than the ' indifference ' you sometimes hear 
 ascribed to Shakspeare. A true English heart breathes, 
 calm and strong, through the whole business ; not 
 boisterous, protrusive ; all the better for that. There 
 is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too 
 had a right stroke in him, had it come to that I 
 
 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 
 
 ^ Hen. V, IV ; Agincourt is in northern France, SE of Calais; 
 there Henry V with 15,000 English completely defeated 60,000 
 French in 1415. 
 
 2 From the splendid and famous speech before Harfleur : — 
 
 Once more unto the breach, dear friends, oi^ce more; 
 Or close the wall up with our English dead. 
 
 And yon, good yeomen, 
 Whose limbs were made in England, show us here 
 The mettle of your pasture. m, i. 
 
156 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 windows, through which we see a glimpse of the world 
 that was in him. All his works seem, comparatively- 
 speaking, cursory, imperfect, written under cramping 
 circumstances ; givmg 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 ; 
 wheresoever and whensoever there is an open human 
 soul, that wiU be recognised as true ! " Such bursts, 
 however, make us feel that the surrounding matter is 
 not radiant; that it is, in part, temporary^ conven- 
 tional. Alas, Shakspeare had to wTite 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 
 Thought before us ; but his Thought as he could trans- 
 late it into the stone that was given, with the tools 
 that were given. Disjecta memhra ^ are all that we 
 find of any Poet, or of any man. 
 
 Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakspeare may 
 recognise that he too was a Prophet, in his way ; of 
 an insight analogous to the Prophetic, though he took 
 it up in another strain. Nature seemed to this man 
 also divine ; w/ispeakable, deep as Tophet, high as 
 Heaven : ' We are such stuff as Dreams are made of ! ' 
 That scrolP in Westminster Abbey, which few read 
 
 ^ Scattered parts. 
 
 2 Held in the left hand of the statue of Shakespeare. On it is 
 inscribed a somewhat inaccurate version of a part of Prospero's 
 famous speech in The Tempest, iv, i, 152 ff. : — 
 
THE HERO AS POET 157 
 
 with understanding-, is of the depth of any seer. But 
 the man sang ; did not preach, except musically. We 
 called Dante the melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catho- 
 licism. May we not call Shakspeare the still more 
 melodious Priest of a true Catholicism, the ' Univer- 
 sal Church ' of the Future and of aU times ? No nar- 
 row superstition, harsh asceticism, intolerance, fanat- 
 ical fierceness or perversion : a Revelation, so far as 
 it goes, that such a thousandfold hidden beauty and 
 divineness dwells in all Nature ; which let all men 
 worship as they can ! We may say without offence, 
 that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this 
 Shakspeare too ; not unfit to make itself heard among- 
 the still more sacred Psahns. 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, 
 though he says little about his Patriotism ; nor scep- 
 tic, though he says little about his Faith. Such ' indif- 
 ference ' was the fruit of his greatness withal : his 
 whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship 
 (we may call it such) ; these other controversies, vitally 
 important to other men, were not vital to him. 
 
 But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not 
 a right glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shak- 
 
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
 Yea, aU which it inherit, shall dissolve 
 And, like this insiibstantial pageant faded, 
 Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff 
 As dreams are madfe on, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep. 
 
158 LECTTTRES ON HEROES 
 
 speare has brought us ? For myself, I feel that there 
 is actually a kind of saeredness in the fact of such a 
 man being sent into this Earth. Is he not an eye to 
 us all ; a blessed -heaven-sent Bringer of Light ? — 
 And, at bottom, was it not perhaps far better that 
 this Shakspeare, everyway an unconscious man, was 
 conscious of no Heavenly message ? He did not feel, 
 like- Mahomet, because he saw into those internal 
 Splendours, that he specially was the ' Prophet of 
 God : ' and was he not greater than Mahomet in that ? 
 Greater ; and also, if we compute strictly, as we did 
 in Dante's case, more successful. It was intrinsically 
 an error that notion of Mahomet's, of his supreme 
 Prophethood ; and has come down to us inextricably 
 involved in error to tliis day ; dragging along with it 
 such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances, as makes 
 it a questionable step for me here and now to sa}^ as 
 I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all, 
 and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and 
 simulacrum ; no Speaker, but a Babbler ! Even in 
 Arabia, as I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted 
 himself and become obsolete, while this Shakspeare, 
 this Dante may still be 3'oung ; — while this ShaksiJeare 
 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 ^schylus^ 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 perennial. But as for Mahomet, I think 
 
 ' Greatest of Greek dramatists ♦(525-456 b. c), author of 
 Prometheus Bound, The Seven against Thebes, Agamemnon. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 159 
 
 it had been better for him not to be so conscious ! 
 Alas, poor Mahomet ; all that he was conscious of 
 was a mere error ; a futility and triviality, — as indeed 
 such ever is. The truly gi-eat in him too was the un- 
 conscious : that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, 
 and did speak-out with that great thunder-voice of his, 
 not by words which he thought to be great, but by 
 actions, by feelings, by a history which were great ! 
 His Koran has become a stupid piece of prolix absurd- 
 ity ; we do not believe, like him, that God wrote that ! 
 The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of 
 Nature : whatsoever is tridy great in him springs-up 
 from the inarticulate deeps. 
 
 Well : this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who 
 rose to be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could 
 live without begging ; whom the Earl of Southampton 
 cast some kind glances on ; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, 
 many thanks to him, was for sending to the Tread- 
 mill ! 1 We did not account him a god, like Odin, 
 while he dwelt with us ; — on which point there were 
 much to be said. But I will say rather, or repeat : 
 In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies in, 
 consider what this Shakspeare has actually become 
 among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this 
 land of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we 
 not give-up rather than the Stratford Peasant ? There 
 is no resfiment of hiohest Disfnitaries that we would 
 sell him for. He is the grandest thing we have yet 
 done. For our honour among foreign nations, as an 
 
 ^ Used in prisons of Carlyle's time as an instrument of dis- 
 cipline, to provide " labor " for prisoners. 
 
160 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 ornament to our English Household, what item is 
 there that we would not surrender rather than him ? 
 Consider now, if they asked us, Will you give-up 
 your Indian Empire or your Shakspeare, you English ; 
 never have had any Indian Empire, or never have had 
 any Shakspeare ? Eeally it were a grave question. 
 Official persons would answer doubtless in official lan- 
 guage ; but we, for our part too, should not we be 
 forced to answer : Indian Empire, or no Indian Em- 
 pire ; we cannot do without Shakspeare ! Indian 
 Empire \vill go, at any rate, some day ; but this Shak- 
 speare does not go, he lasts forever with us ; we can- 
 not give-up our Shakspeare ! 
 
 Nay, apart from spiritualities ; and considering 
 him merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful pos- 
 session. England, before long, this Island of ours, 
 will hold but a small fraction of the English : in 
 America, in New Holland,^ east and west to the very 
 Antipodes, there will be a Saxondom covering great 
 spaces of the Globe. And now, what is it that can 
 keep all these together into virtually one Nation, so 
 that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at peace, 
 in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another ? This 
 is justly regarded as the gi*eatest practical problem, 
 the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments 
 are here to accomplish : what is it that will accom- 
 plish this ? Acts of Parliament, administrative prime- 
 ministers cannot. America is parted from us, so far 
 as Parliament could part it. Call it not fantastic, for 
 there is much reality in it : Here, I say, is an Eng- 
 lish King, whom no time or chance. Parliament or 
 combination of Parliaments, can dethrone ! This 
 ^ An early name for Australia. 
 
THE HERO AS POET 161 
 
 King Shakspeare, does not he shine, in crowned 
 sovereignity, over us all, -as the noblest, gentlest, 
 yet strongest of rallying-signs ; iVidestructible ; really 
 more valuable in that point of view than any other 
 means or appliance whatsoever? We can fancy him 
 as radiant aloft over all the Nations of Englishmen, 
 a thousand years hence. From Paramatta,^ from New 
 York, wheresoever, under what sort of Parish-Consta- 
 ble soever, English men and women are, they will say 
 to one another : " Yes, this Shakspeare is ours ; we 
 produced him, we speak and think by him ; we are of 
 one blood and kind with him." The most common- 
 sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that. 
 
 Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it 
 get an articulate voice ; that it produce a man who 
 will speak-forth melodiously what the heart of it 
 means ! Italy, for example, poor Italy lies dismem- 
 bered, scattered asunder, not appearing in any proto- 
 col 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 ; and does 
 a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politi- 
 cally together ; but he cannot yet speak. Something 
 great in him, but it is a dmnb 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 to- 
 gether as no dumb Russia can be. — We must here 
 end what we had to say of the Hero-Poet. 
 1 In New South Wales, Australia. 
 
LECTURE IV 
 
 THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER ; REFORMATION : 
 KNOX ; PURITANISM 
 
 [Friday, 15th May 1840.] 
 
 Our present discourse is to be of the Great Man as 
 Priest. We have repeatedly endeavoured to explain 
 that all sorts of Heroes are intrinsically of the same 
 material ; that given a great soul, open to the Divine 
 Significance of Life, then there is given a man fit to 
 speak of this, to sing of this, to fight and work for this, 
 in a great, victorious, enduring manner ; there is given 
 a Hero, — the outward shape of whom will depend on 
 the time and the environment he finds himself in. The 
 Priest too, .as I understand it, is a kind of Prophet ; in 
 him too there is required to be a light of inspiration, 
 as we must name it. He presides over the worship of 
 the people ; is the Uniter of them with the Unseen 
 Holy. He is the spiritual Captain of the people ; as the 
 Prophet is their spiritual King with many captains : 
 he guides them heavenward, by wise guidance through 
 this Earth and its work. The ideal of him is, that he too 
 be what we can call a voice from the unseen Heaven ; 
 interpreting, even as the Prophet did, and in a more 
 familiar manner unfolding the same to men. The un- 
 seen Heaven, — the ' open secret of the Universe,' — 
 which so few have ai> eye for ! He is the Prophet shorn 
 of his more awful splendour ; burning with mild equa- 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 163 
 
 ble radiance, as the enlightener of daily life. This, I 
 say, is the ideal of a Priest. So in old times ; so in 
 these, and in all times. One knows very well that, in 
 reducing ideals to practice, great latitude of tolerance 
 is needful ; very great. But a Priest who is not this at 
 all, who does not any longer aim or try to be this, is a 
 character — of whom we had rather not speak in this 
 place. 
 
 Luther and Knox were by express vocation Priests, 
 and did faithfully perform that function in its common 
 sense. Yet it will suit us better here to consider them 
 chiefly in their historical character, rather as Re- 
 formers than Priests. There have been other Priests 
 perhaps equally notable, in calmer times, for doing 
 faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship ; bringing 
 down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from 
 Heaven into the daily life of their people ; leading them 
 forward, as under God's guidance, in the way wherein 
 they were to go. But when this same tvay was a rough 
 one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Cap- 
 tain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us 
 who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable 
 than any other. He is the warfaring and battling 
 Priest ; who led his people, not to quiet faithful labour- 
 as in smooth times, but to faithful valorous conflict, 
 in times all violent, dismembered : a more perilous ser- 
 vice, and a more memorable one, be it higher or not. 
 These two men we will account our best Priests, inas- 
 much as they were our best Reformers. Nay I may 
 ask. Is not every true Reformer, by the nature of him, 
 a. Priest first of all? He appeals to Heaven's invisible 
 justice against Earth's visible force ; knows that it. 
 
164 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 the invisible, is strong and alone strong. lie is a 
 believer in the divine truth of things ; a seer, seeing 
 through the shows of things ; a worshipper, in one way 
 or the other, of the divine truth of tilings ; a Priest, 
 that is. If he be not first a Priest, he will never be 
 good for much as a Reformer. 
 
 Thus then, as we have seen Great Men, in various 
 situations, building-up Religions, heroic Forms of hu- 
 man Existence in this world, Theories of Life worthy 
 to be sung by a Dante, Practices of Life by a Shak- 
 speare, — we are now to see the reverse jDrocess ; which 
 also is necessary, which also may be carried-on in the 
 Heroic manner. Curious how this should be necessary : 
 yet necessary it is. The mild shining of the Poet's 
 light has to give place to the fierce lightning of the 
 Reformer : unfortunately the Reformer too is a per- 
 sonage that cannot fail in History ! The Poet indeed, 
 with his mildness, what is he but the product and ulti- 
 mate adjustment of Reform, or Prophecy, with its 
 fierceness? No wild Saint Dominies^ and Thebaid 
 Eremites,^ there had been no melodious Dante ; rough 
 Practical Endeavour, Scandinavian and other, from 
 Odin to Walter Raleigh,^ from Ulfila* to Cranmer,^ 
 
 ^ Domingo de Guzman (1170-1221), a Spanish Roman Catho- 
 lic ecclesiastic, founder of the monastic order of Dominicans, or 
 Preaching Friars, — called in England Black Friars. 
 
 2 The Hermits of Thebes, in Egypt, living in solitude and pri- 
 vation as a religious obligation. 
 
 3 A brilliant and versatile adventurer, explorer, poet, and prose- 
 writer (1552-1618). 
 
 * See p. 28, n. 2. 
 
 s Archbishop of Canterbury ; burned at the stake for heresy in 
 1556, under "Bloody Mary " (Queen of England, 1553-1558). 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 165 
 
 enabled Sliakspeare to speak. Nay the j&nislied Poet, 
 I remark sometimes, is a 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 musical way, how 
 good were it could we get so much as into the equable 
 way ; I mean, if j^^aceable Priests, reforming from 
 day to day, would always suffice us ! But it is not so ; 
 even this latter has not yet been realised. 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 indispensable 
 furtherances become obstructions ; and need to be 
 shaken-off and left behind us, — a business often of 
 enormous difficulty. It is notable enough, surely, how 
 a Theorem or spiritual Representation, so we may call 
 it, which once took-in the whole Universe, and was 
 completely satisfactory in all parts of it to the highly- 
 discursive acute intellect of Dante, one of the greatest 
 in the world, — had in the course of another century 
 become dubitable to common intellects ; become deni- 
 able ; and is now, to every one of us, flatly incredible, 
 obsolete as Odiu-s Theorem ! To Dante, human Exist- 
 ence, and God's ways with men, were all well repre- 
 sented by those JIalebolges, Purgatorios ; to Luther 
 not well. How was this? Why coidd not Dante's 
 
 ^ Whose skill in music was so great, according to the Greek 
 myth, that he charmed the wild animals and even rocks and 
 trees to follow him. 
 
166 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Catholicism continue ; but Luther's Protestantism 
 must needs follow? Alas, nothing will continue. 
 
 I do not make much of ' Progress of the Species,' 
 as handled in these times of ours ; nor do I think you 
 would care to hear much about it. The talk on that 
 subject is too often of the most extravagant, confused 
 sort. Yet I may say, the fact itself seems certain 
 enough ; nay we can trace-out the inevitable necessity 
 of it in the nature of things. Every man, as I have 
 stated somewhere, is not only a learner but a doer : 
 he learns with the mind given him what has been ; 
 but with the same mind he discovers farther, he 
 invents and devises somewhat of his own. Absolutely 
 without originality there is no man. No man what- 
 ever believes, or can believe, exactly what his grand- 
 father believed : he enlarges somewhat, by fresh dis- 
 covery, his view of the Universe, and consequently his 
 Theorem of the Universe, — which is an infinite Uni- 
 verse, and can never be embraced wholly or finally 
 by any view or Theorem, in any conceivable enlarge- 
 ment : he onlarges somewhat, I say ; finds 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 Purgatory ^ does not 
 stand 'in the. ocean -of the other HeraisiDhere,' when 
 Columbus has once sailed thither ! Men find no such 
 thing extant in the other Hemisphere. It is not there. 
 
 1 Located by the poet on the other side of the earth, exactly 
 opposite Jerusalem. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 167 
 
 It must cease to be believed to be there. So with all 
 beliefs whatsoever in this world, — all Systems of Be- 
 lief, and Systems of Practice that spring from these. 
 
 If we add now the melancholy fact, that when Be- 
 lief waxes uncertain, Practice too becomes unsound, 
 and errors, injustices and miseries everywhei-e more 
 and more prevail, we shall see material enough for 
 revolution. At all turns, a man who will do 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 suffrage serve, 
 he is a poor eye-servant ; the work committed to him 
 will be mlsdone. Every such man is a daily contrib- 
 utor to the inevitable downfall. Whatsoever work he 
 does, dishonestly, with an eye to the outward look 
 of.it, is a new offence, parent of new misery to some- 
 body or other. Offences accumulate till they become 
 insupportable ; and are then violently burst through, 
 cleared off as by explosion. Dante's sublime Catholi- 
 cism, incredible now in theory, and defaced still worse 
 by faithless, doubting and dishonest practice, has to be 
 torn asunder by a Luther ; Shakspeare's noble Feu- 
 dalism, as beautiful as it once looked and was, has to 
 end in a French Revolution. The accumulation of 
 offences is, as we say, too literally exploded, blasted 
 asunder volcanically ; and there are long troublous 
 periods before matters come to a settlement again. 
 
 Surely it were mournful enough to look only at this 
 face of the matter, and find in all human opinions and 
 ai-rangements merely the fact that they were uncertain, 
 temporary, subject to the law of death ! At bottom, it is 
 not so : all death, here too we find, is but of the body, 
 
168 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 not of the essence or soul; all destruction, by violent 
 revolution or howsoever it be, is but new creation on a 
 wider scale. Odinism was Valour ; Christianism was 
 Humility^ a nobler kind of Valour. No thought that 
 ever dwelt honestly as true in the heart of man but was 
 an honest insight into God's truth on man's part, and 
 has an essential truth in it which endures through all 
 changes, an everlasting possession for us all. And, on 
 the other hand, what a melancholy notion is that, which 
 has to represent all men, in all countries and times 
 except our own, as having spent their life in blind con- 
 demnable error, mere lost Pagans, Scandinavians, Ma- 
 hometans, only that we might have the true ultimate 
 knowledge ! All generations of men were lost and 
 wrong, only that this present little section of a gen- 
 eration 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,^ oxAj to fill-up the ditch with their 
 dead bodies, that we might march-over and take the 
 place ! It is an incredible hj-jjothesis. 
 
 Siich 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 bodies of all men, towards 
 sure victory : but when he too, with his hyj^othesis and 
 ultimate infallible credo, sank into the ditch, and 
 became a dead body, what was to be said ? — Withal, 
 
 ^ In eastern Germany. The story of the capture of the town 
 (1761) by the Allies (in the Seven Years' War of Frederick the 
 Great vs. Austria, Russia, France, Saxony, and Sweden) is told 
 in Carlyle's History of Friedrich II, Book xx, viii. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 169 
 
 it is an important fact in the nature of man, that he 
 tends to reckon his own insight as final, and goes upon 
 it as such. He will always do it, I suppose, in one or 
 the other way ; but it must be in some wider, wiser 
 way than this. Are not all true men that live, or that 
 ever lived, soldiers of the same army, enlisted, under 
 Heaven's captaincy, to do battle against the same 
 enemy, the empire of Darkness and Wrong? Why 
 should we misknow one another, fight not against the 
 enemy but against ourselves, from mere difference oi' 
 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 Jotuns, 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 Heroes ; a Prophet to his 
 country and time. 
 
 As introductory to the whole* a remark about Idola- 
 try will perhaps be in place here. One of Mahomet's 
 characteristics, 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 
 
 ^ Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination 
 uuto me; the new moons and sabbaths; the calling of assemblies, 
 I cannot away with. Isaiah i, 13. 
 
170 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 brand with inexpiable reprobation ; it is the chief of 
 all the sins they see clone under the sun.^ This is 
 worth noting. We will not enter here into the theo- 
 logical question about Idolatry. Idol is Eidolon^ a 
 thing seen, a symbol. It is not God, but a Symbol of 
 God ; and perhaps one may question whether any 
 the most benighted mortal ever took it for more than 
 a Symbol. I fancy, he did not think that the poor 
 image his own hands had made was^ God ; but that 
 God was emblemed by it, that God was in it some 
 way or other. And now in this sense, one may ask, Is 
 not all worship whatsoever a worship by Symbols, by 
 eidola, or things seen ? "Whether seen, rendered \asible 
 ais an image or picture to the bodily eye : or visible 
 only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the 
 intellect : this makes a superficial, but no substantial 
 difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of 
 Godhead ; an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has 
 his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representa- 
 tion 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 Symbols, by 
 Idols : — we may say, all Idolatry is comparative, and 
 the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. 
 
 Where, then, lies the evil of it ? Some fatal evil 
 must lie in it, or earnest prophetic men would not on 
 all hands so reprobate it. Why is Idolatry so hateful 
 to Prophets ? It seems to me as if, in the worship of 
 
 ^ I have seen all the works that are doue under the sun ; and, 
 behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Eccles. i, 14. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST ' 171 
 
 those poor wooden symbols, the thing that had chiefly 
 provoked the Prophet, and filled his inmost soul with 
 indignation and aversion, was not exactly what sug- 
 gested itself to his own thought, and came out of him 
 in words to others, as the thing. The rudest heathen 
 that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, 
 he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that worshipped 
 nothing at all ! Nay there was a kind of lasting merit 
 in that poor act of his ; analogous to what is still meri- 
 torious in Poets : recognition of a certain endless divine 
 beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects 
 whatsoever. Why should the Prophet so mercilessly 
 condemn him? The poorest mortal worshipping his 
 Petish,^ while his heart is full of it, may be an object 
 of pity, of contempt and avoidance, if you will ; but 
 cannot sm^ely be an object of hatred. Let his heart be 
 honestly full of it, the whole space of his dark narrow 
 mind illuminated thereby ; in one word, let him en- 
 tirely believe in his Fetish, — it will then be, I should 
 say, if not well with him, yet as well as it can readily 
 be made to be, and j'ou will leave him alone, unmo- 
 lested there. 
 
 But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, 
 that, in the era of the Prophets, no man's mind is any 
 longer honestly filled with his Idol or Symbol. Before 
 the Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it 
 to be mere wood, many men must have begun dimly to 
 doubt that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry 
 is insincei^e Idolatry. Doubt has eaten-out the heart 
 of it : a human soul is seen clinging spasmodically to 
 
 ^ Any object worshipped or feared as possessing mysterious 
 or supernatural powers. 
 
172 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 • 
 
 an Ark of the Covenant, wliich it half-feels now to 
 have become a Phantasm. This is one of the balefulest 
 sights. Souls are no longer filled with their Fetish ; 
 but only pretend to be filled, and would fain make 
 themselves feel that they are filled. " You do not be- 
 lieve," 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 henceforth of any morality whatsoever : 
 the innermost moral 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 inextinguishable aversion. 
 He and it*, aU good and it, are at death-feud. Blam- 
 able Idolatry is Cant, and even what one may call Sin- 
 cere-Cant. Sincere-Cant : that is worth thinking of ! 
 Every sort of Worship ends with this phasis. 
 
 I find Luther to have been a Breaker of Idols, no 
 less than any other Prophet. The wooden gods of the 
 Koreish, made of timber and bees-wax, were not more 
 hateful to Mahomet than Tetzel's ^ Pardons of Sin, 
 made of sheepskin and ink, were to Luther, It is the 
 property of every Hero, in every time, in every place 
 
 - A Dominican preacher (1455-1519), who was so (financially) 
 efficient a seller of indulgences that he was employed in that' 
 capacity by the Pope almost continuously from 1502 to 1518. 
 His personal morals were by no means above reproacli. He was 
 suspended in 1518. The Council of Trent repudiated the prin- 
 ciple of selling indulgences. See p. 31, n. 2. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 173 
 
 and situation, that he come back t© reality ; that he 
 stand upon things, and not shows of things. Accord- 
 ing as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep 
 speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will 
 the hollow shows of things, however regidar, 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. The first stroke of honest demolition to an 
 ancient thing grown false and idolatrous ; preparatory 
 afar »&. to a new thing, which shall be true, and 
 authentically divine ! — 
 
 At first view it might seem as if Protestantism were 
 entirely destructive to this that we call Hero-worship, 
 and represent as the basis of all possible good, religious 
 or social, for mankind. One often hears it said that 
 Protestantism introduced a new era, radically different 
 from any the world had ever seen before : the era of 
 'private judgment,' as they call it. By this revolt 
 against the Pope, every man became his own Pope ; 
 and learnt, among other things, that he must never 
 trust any Pope, or spiritual Hero-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 Pi'o- 
 testantism was a revolt against spiritual sovereignties, 
 Popes and much else. Nay I will grant that English 
 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 made sure of abolition. Protestantism is the q:rand 
 
174 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 root from wliicli our whole subsequent European His- 
 tory branches out. For the spiritual will always body 
 itself forth in the temporal history of men ; the sj)irit- 
 ual is the beginning 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 suffrages : 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 shoiild despair of 
 the world altogether, if so. One of my deeped con- 
 victions is, that it is not so. Without sovereigns, true 
 sovereigns, temporal and spiritual, I see nothing possi- 
 ble but an anarchy ; the hatef ulest of things. But I 
 find Protestantism, whatever anarchic democracy it 
 have produced, to be the beginning of new genuine 
 sovereignty and order. I find it to be a revolt against 
 false sovereigns ; the painful but indispensable first 
 preparative for true sovereigns getting place among 
 us I This is worth explaining a little. 
 
 Let us remark, therefore, in the first place, that 
 this of ' private judgment ' is, at bottom, not a new 
 thing in the world, but only new at that epoch of the 
 world. There is nothing generically new or peculiar 
 in the Keformation ; it was a return to Truth and 
 Reality in oi3position to Falsehood and Semblance, as 
 all kinds of Improvement and genuine Teaching are 
 and have been. Liberty of private judgment, if we 
 will consider it, must at all times have existed in the 
 world. Dante had not put-out his eyes, or tied shackles 
 on himself ; he was at home in that Catholicism of 
 his, a free-seeing soul in it, — if many a poor Hog- 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 175 
 
 straten,^ Tetzel and Dr. Eck ^ had now become slaves 
 in it. Liberty of judgment ? No iron chain, or out- 
 ward force of any kind, could ever compel the soul of 
 a man to believe or to disbelieve : it is his own inde- 
 feasible light, that judgment of his ; he will reign, 
 and believe there, by the grace of God alone ! The 
 sorriest sophistical Bellarmine,^ preaching sightless 
 faith and passive obedience, must first, by some kind 
 of conviction, have abdicated his right to be convmced. 
 His ' private judgment ' indicated that, as the ad vis- 
 ablest step he could take. The right of jDrivate judg- 
 ment will subsist, in full force, wherever true men 
 subsist. A true man believes with his whole judgment, 
 with all the illumination and discei"nment that is in 
 him, and has always 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. Be genuine, be 
 sincere : that was, once more, the meaning of it. Ma- 
 homet believed with his whole mind ; Odin with his 
 whole mind, — he, and all true Followers of Odinism. 
 They, by their private judgment, had ' judged ' — so. 
 And now I venture to assert, that the exercise of 
 private judgment, faithfully gone about, does by no 
 means necessarily end in selfish independence, isola- 
 
 ^ Hogstraten or (Hoogstraten), a Dominican monk, and Eck, 
 a professor of theology, both contemporaries of Luther, were 
 enthusiastic haters of him and his doctrines. 
 
 2 Cardinal, Archbishop, Librarian of the Vatican (1542-1621); 
 a zealous champion of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. • 
 
176 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 tion ; but rather ends necessarily in the opjjosite of 
 that. It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy ; 
 but it is error, insincerity, half-behef 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 possible among men 
 wltD beheve only in hearsays. The heart of each is 
 lying dead ; has no power of sympathy even with 
 things, — or he would believe thcjn and not hearsays. 
 No sympathy even with things; how much less with 
 his feUow-men ! He cannot unite with men ; he is an 
 anarchic man. Only in a world of sincere men is unity 
 possible ; — and there, in the loagrun, it is as good as 
 certain. 
 
 For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of 
 view, or rather altogether lost sight of, in this contro- 
 versy : That it is not necessary a man should himself 
 have discovered the 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 epochs of Time. A man 
 can believe, and make his own, in the most genuine 
 way, what he has received from another ; — and with 
 boundless gratitude to that other ! The merit of oi-i- 
 ginality is not novelty ; it is sincerity. The believing 
 man is the original man ; whatsoever he believes, he 
 believes it for himself, not for another. Every son of 
 Adam can become a sincere man, an original man, in 
 this sense ; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere 
 man. Whole ages, what we call ages of Faith, are ori- 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 177 
 
 ginal ; all men in them, or the most of men in them, 
 sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages: every 
 worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on semblance 
 but on substance ; every work issues in a result : the 
 general sum of such work is great ; for all of it, as 
 genuine, tends towards one goal ; all of it is additive, 
 none of it subtractive. There is true union, true king- 
 ship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the 
 poor Earth can produce blessedness for men. 
 
 Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, 
 original, true, or what we call it, is surely the farthest 
 in the world from indisposing him to revei'ence and 
 believe other men's truth ! It only disposes, necessi- 
 tates and invincibly compels him to Ji^believe other 
 men's dead formulas, hearsays and untruths. A man 
 embraces truth with his eyes open, and because his 
 eyes are open : does he need to shut them before he 
 can love his Teacher of truth ? He alone can love, with 
 a right gratitude and genuine loyalty of soul, the 
 Hero-Teacher who has delivered him out of darkness 
 into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and Serpent- 
 queller ; worthy of all reverence ! The black monster, 
 Falsehood, our one enemy in this world, lies prostrate 
 by his valour ; it was he that conquered the world for 
 us ! — See, accordingly, was not Luther himself rev- 
 erenced as a true Pope, or Spiritual Father, bei7ig 
 verily such? Napoleon, from amid boundless revolt of 
 Sansculottism, ^ became a King. Hero-worship never 
 dies, nor can die. Loyalty and Sovereignty are ever- 
 lasting in the world : — and there is this in them, that 
 they are grounded not on garnitures and semblances, 
 1 See p. 275, n. 1. 
 
178 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 but on realities and sincerities. Not by shutting your 
 eyes, your ' private judgment ; ' no, but by opening 
 them, and by having something to see ! Luther's mes- 
 sage was deposition and abolition to all false Popes and 
 Potentates, but life and strength, though afar off, to 
 new genuine ones. 
 
 All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suf- 
 frages. Independence and so forth, we will take, there- 
 fore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a 
 final one. Though likely to last a long time, with, sad 
 enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, 
 as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of 
 inestimable benefits that are coming. In aU ways, it 
 behoved men to quit simulacra and return to fact ; 
 cost what it might, that did behove to be done. With 
 spurious Popes, and Believers having no private judg- 
 ment, — quacks pretending to command over dupes, 
 
 — what can you do ? Misery and mischief only. You 
 cannot make an association out of insincere men ; you 
 cannot build an edifice except by plummet and level, 
 
 — at 7'i</7i/-angles to one another ! In all this wild 
 revolutionary work, from Protestantism downwards, I 
 see the blessedest result preparing itseK : not aboli- 
 tion of Hero-worship, but rather what I would call a 
 whole World of Heroes. If Hero mean sincere man, 
 why may not every one of us be a Hero ? A world 
 all sincere, a believing world : the like has been ; the 
 like will again be, — cannot help being. That were 
 the right sort of Worshippers for Heroes : never could 
 the truly Better be so reverenced as where all were 
 True and Good ! — But we must hasten to Luther 
 and his Life. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 179 
 
 Luther's birthplace was Eisleben ^ in Saxony ; he 
 came into the world there on the 10th of November 
 1483. It was an accident that gave this honour to 
 Eisleben. His parents, poor mine-labourers in a vil- 
 lage of that region, named Mohra, had gone to the 
 Eisleben Winter-Fair : in the tumult of this scene 
 the Frau Luther was taken with travail, found refuge 
 in some poor house there, and the boy she bore was 
 named Martin Luther. Strange enough to reflect 
 upon it. This poor Frau Luther, she had gone with 
 her husband to make her small merchandisings ; per- 
 haps to sell the lock of yarn she had been spinning, 
 to buy the small winter-necessaries for her narrow 
 hut or household ; in the whole world, that day, there 
 was not a more entirely unimportant-looking pair of 
 people than this Miner and his Wife. And yet what 
 were all Emperors, Popes and Potentates, in compari- 
 son ? There was born here, once more, a Mighty 
 Man ; whose light was to flame as the beacon over 
 long centuries and epochs of the world ; the whole 
 world and its histoiy was waiting for this man. It 
 is strange, it is great. It leads us back to another 
 Birth-hour, in a still meaner environment, Eighteen 
 Plundred years ago, — of which it is fit that we say 
 nothing, that we thmk only in silence ; for what 
 words are there ! The Age of Miracles past ? The 
 Age of Miracles is forever here I — 
 
 I find it altogether suitable to Luther's function irr, 
 
 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, 
 
 1 Thirty-nine miles about WNW of Leipzig. 
 
180 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 one of tlie poorest of men. He had to beg, as the 
 school-children in those times did ; singing for ahns 
 and bread, from door to door. Hardship, rigorous 
 Necessity was the poor boy's companion ; no man nor 
 no thing would put-on a false face to flatter Martin 
 Luther. Among things, not among the shows of 
 things, had he to grow. A boy of rude figure, yet 
 with weak health, with his large greedy soul, fidl of 
 all faculty and sensibility, he suffered greatly. But 
 it was his task to get acquainted with realities, 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, that he may step-forth at last from his 
 stormy Scandinavia, strong as a true man, as a god : 
 a Christian Odin, — a right Thor once more, with his 
 thunder-hannner, to smite asimder ugly enough Jotuns 
 and Giant-monsters ! 
 
 Perhaps the turning incident of his life, we may 
 fancy, was that death of his friend Alexis, by light- 
 ning, at the gate of Erfurt. Luther had struggled-up 
 through boyhood, better and worse ; displajdng, in 
 spite of all hindrances, the largest intellect, eager to 
 learn : his father judging doubtless that he might 
 promote himself in the world, set him upon the study 
 of Law. This was the path to rise ; Luther, with lit- 
 tle will in it either way, had consented : he was now 
 nineteen years of age. Alexis and he had been to see 
 the old Lutlier people at Mansfeldt ; ^ were got back 
 
 ^ Where Luther's father had become a member of the town 
 council. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 THE HERO AS PRIEST 181 
 
 again near Erfnrt,^ 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 moment, 
 burnt-up like a scroll, into the blank Eternity ! What 
 are all earthly preferments, Chancellorships, King- 
 ships ? They lie shrunk together — there ! The Earth 
 has opened on them ; in a moment they are not, and 
 Eternity is. Luther, struck to the heart, determined 
 to devote himself to God and God's service 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 
 of Luther, his purer will now first decisively uttering 
 itself ; but, for the present, it was still as one light- 
 point in an element all of darkness. He says he was 
 a pious monk, ich bin ein fronvuer 3I'6nch geivesen ; 
 faithfully, painfully struggling to work-out the truth 
 of this high act of his ; but it was to little purpose. 
 His misery had not lessened ; had rather, as it were, 
 increased into infinitude. The drudgeries he had to 
 do, as novice in his Convent, all sorts of slave-work, 
 were not his grievance : the deep earnest soul of the 
 man had fallen into all manner of black scruples, dubi- 
 tations ; he believed himself likely to die soon, and 
 far worse than die. One hears with a new interest for 
 poor Luther that, at this time, he lived in terror of the 
 unspeakable misery.; fancied that he was doomed to 
 eternal reprobation. Was it not the humble sincere 
 nature of the man ? What was he, that he should be 
 raised to Heaven ! He that had known only misery, 
 
 1 Where Luther had entered the university in 1501. 
 
 2 1505. 
 
182 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 and mean slavery : the news was too blessed to be 
 credible. It could not become clear to him how, by 
 fasts, vigils, formalities and mass-work, a man's soul 
 could be saved. He fell into the blackest wretchedness ; 
 had to wander 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 Erfurt 
 Library about this time. He had never seen the Book 
 before.^ It taught him another lesson than that of 
 fasts and vigils. A brother monk too, of pious experi- 
 ence, was helpful. Luther learned now that a man was 
 saved not by singing masses, but by the infinite grace 
 of God: a more credible hypothesis. He gradually 
 got himself founded, as on the rock. No 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 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, and be found more and more useful in 
 all honest business of life, is a natural result. He was 
 
 ^ Luther had followed the usual university course with the study 
 of law (see p. 180). Outside the ranks of teachers and students 
 of theology, the Bible was much less known than the Church 
 Fathers, who were considered of equal, if not greater, authority 
 and importance. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 183 
 
 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 prmce, had cast his eye on him as a val- 
 uable person ; made him Professor in his new Uni- 
 versity of Wittenberg,! Preacher too at Wittenberg ; 
 in both which capacities, as in all duties he did, this 
 Luther, in the peaceable sphere of common life, was 
 gaining more and more esteem with all 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 God's Highpriest on Earth ; and he found 
 it — what we laiow ! ^ Many thoughts it must have 
 given the man ; many which we have no record of, 
 which perhaps he did not himself know how to utter. 
 This Rome, this scene of false priests, clothed not in 
 the beauty of holiness, but in far other vesture, is 
 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 thi'ough the world. Let him do 
 his own obscure duty in it well ; the rest, horrible and 
 dismal as it looks, is in God's hand, not in his. 
 
 ^ Founded 1502. Shakespeare's Hamlet and Horatio were 
 Wittenberg students. 
 
 2 Unequaled in all Europe for every sort of debauchery and 
 corruption. 
 
184 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 It is curious to reflect what might have been the 
 issue, had Kouian 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 this case, he 
 might have held his peace about the abuses of Rome ; 
 left Providence, and God on high, to deal with them ! 
 A modest quiet man ; not prompt he to attack 
 irreverently persons in authority. His clear task, as I 
 say, was to do his own duty ; to walk wisely in this 
 world of confused wickedness, and save his own soul 
 alive. But the Roman Highpriesthood did come 
 athwart him : afar off at Wittenberg he, Luther, 
 could not get lived ^ in honesty for it ; he remon- 
 strated, resisted, came to extremity ; was struck-at, 
 struck again, and so it came to wager of battle be- 
 tween them ! This is worth attending to in Luther's 
 history. Perhaps no man of so hmnble, peaceable a 
 disposition ever filled the world with contention. 
 We cannot but see that he would have loved privacy, 
 quiet diligence in the shade ; that it was against his 
 will he ever became a notoriety. Notoriety : what 
 would that do for liim? The goal of his march 
 through this world was the Infinite Heaven ; an 
 indubitable goal for him : in a few years, he should 
 either have attained that, or lost it forever ! We will 
 say nothing at all, I think, of that sorrowfulest of 
 theories, of its being sonie mean shopkeeper grudge, of 
 the Augustine Monk against the Dominican, that first 
 kindled the wrath of Luther, and produced the Pro- 
 
 ^ The idiom is more familiar in "get killed," "get lost," etc. 
 See p. 326, — " could not get resigned." 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 185 
 
 testant Reformation. We will say to the people who 
 maintain it, if indeed any such exist now: Get first 
 into the sphere of thought by which it is so much as 
 possible to judge of Luther, or of any man like 
 Luther, otherwise than distractedly ; we may then 
 begin arguing' with you. 
 
 The Monk Tetzel, sent out carelessly in the way of 
 trade, by Leo Tenth,i — who merely wanted to raise 
 a little money, and for the rest seems to have been a 
 Pagan rather than a Christian, so far as he was any- 
 thing, — arrived at Wittenberg, and drove his scandal- 
 ous ti'ade there. Luther's flock bought Indulgences ; 
 in the confessional of his church, people pleaded to 
 him that they had already got their sins pardoned. 
 Luther, if he would not be found wanting at liis 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 sorrow- 
 ful mockery, that no man's sins could be pardoned by 
 them. It was the beginning of the whole Reforma- 
 tion. We know how it went ; forward from this first 
 public challenge ^ of Tetzel, on the last day of October 
 1517, through remonstrance and argument; — spread- 
 ing ever wider, rising ever higher ; till it became 
 unquenchable, and enveloped all the world. Luther's 
 
 ^ Born 1475, made Cardinal at the age of thirteen, Pope in 
 1513, and died 1521. He was the son of Lorenzo de' Medici 
 " The Magnificent," and a liberal patron of art and letters.- 
 
 ^ The ninetj-five "theses" or statements, opposing indul- 
 gences, nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. 
 The Elector of Saxouy sided with Luther, and refused Tetzel 
 permission to enter his domain. 
 
186 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 various softer methods, he thought good to end 
 it hy fire. He dooms the Monk's writings to be burnt 
 by the hangman, 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 Comicil,^ with all imagin- 
 able promises and safe-conducts ; an earnest, not rebel- 
 lious kind of man : they laid him instantly in a stone 
 dungeon ' tlu'ee-feet wide, six-feet high, seven-feet 
 long ; ' hurnt the true voice of him out of this world ; 
 choked it in smoke and fire. That was not well 
 done ! 
 
 I, for one, pardon Luther for now altogether revolt- 
 ing against the Pope. The elegant Pagan, by this fire- 
 decree of his, had kindled into noble just wrath the 
 bravest heart then living in this world. The bravest, 
 if also one of the humblest, peaceablest ; it was now 
 kindled. These words of mine, words of truth and 
 soberness, aiming faithfully, as human inability would 
 
 ^ Huss and his friend and follower, Jerome, were burned at 
 the slake in 1415 and 1416, respectively. Luther was astonished, 
 he said, to find that he was " a Hussite without knowing it ; 
 that St. Paul and Augustine were Hussites ! " 
 
 2 The seventeenth general Council of the Church, convened at 
 Constance in Baden on the Rhine, in 1414. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 187 
 
 allow, to promote God's truth on Earth, and save men's 
 souls, you, God's vicegerent on earth, answer them by 
 the hangman and fire ? You will burn me and them, 
 for answer to the God's-message they strove to bring 
 you ? You are not God's vicegerent ; you are another's 
 than his, I think ! I take your Bull,i as an emparch- 
 mented Lie, and burn it. You will do what you see 
 good next : this is what I do. — It was on the 10th of 
 December 1520, three years after the beginning of the 
 business, that Luther, ' with a great concourse of peo- 
 ple,' took this indignant step of burning the Pope's 
 fire-decree 'at the Elster-Gate of Wittenberg.' Wit- 
 tenberg looked on ' with shoutings ; ' the whole world 
 was looking on. The Pope should not have provoked 
 that ' shout ' ! It was the shout of the awakening 
 of 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 real- 
 ities ; 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, Mahomet said. These idols of yours are 
 wood ; you put wax and oil on them, the flies stick 
 on them : they are not God, I teU 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 
 
 ^ Papal decree (Lat. hulla='ki\6b, seal), written on parchment 
 with a leaden seal appended with a cord. 
 
188 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 with ink. It is nothing else ; it, and so much hke 
 it, is nothing else.- God alone can pardon sins. Pope- 
 ship, 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 me to it. Standing on this, I a poor Ger- 
 man Monk am stronger than you all. I stand soli- 
 tary, 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 AVorms,^ Luther's appearance there on 
 the 17th of April 1521, maj' 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 midtiplied negotiations, 
 disputations, it had come to this. The young Emperor 
 Charles Fifth, with all the Princes of Germany, Papal 
 nuncios, dignitaries spiritual and temporal, are assem- 
 bled there : Luther is to appear and answer for him- 
 self, 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 
 Son. Friends had reminded him of Huss, advised him 
 not to go ; he would not be advised. A large company 
 of friends rode-out to meet him, with still more earnest 
 
 ^ Papal hat, encircled with three crowns and surmounted with 
 a globe and cross. The three crowns date from the early four- 
 teenth century. Their significance lias been variously inter- 
 preted, but conclusive proof is wanting. See The Dolphin 
 (Phila.), iv. No. 3, September, 1903, pp. 308, 309, 312. 
 
 ^ On the Rhine, in S. W. Germany (pron. Voruas). 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 189 
 
 warnings ; he answered, " Were there as many Devils 
 in Worms as there are roof -tiles, I would on." The 
 people, on the morrow, as he went to the Hall of the 
 Diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of 
 them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to re- 
 cant : " Whosoever denieth me before men I " ^ 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 Nightmare and 
 triple-hatted Chimera, calling itself Father in God, 
 and what not : " Free us ; it rests with thee ; desert 
 us not ! " 
 
 Luther did not desert us. His speech, of two hours, 
 distinguished itself by its resj)ectful, 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 de- 
 rived 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 bless- 
 ing for him could he abolish altogether. But as to 
 what stood on sound truth and the Word of God, 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 con- 
 science. Here stand I ; 1 can do no other : God assist 
 me ! " — It is, as we say, the greatest moment in the 
 Modern History of Men. English Puritanism, Eng- 
 
 ^ But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also 
 deny before my Father which is in heaven. Matt, x, 33. 
 
190 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 land and its Parliaments, Americas, and vast work 
 these two centuries ; French Revolution, Europe and 
 its work everywhere at present : the germ of it all lay 
 there : had Luther in that moment done other, it had 
 all been otherwise ! The European World was asking 
 him : Am I to sink ever lower into falsehood, stag- 
 nant putrescence, loathsome accursed death ; or, with 
 whatever 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 L\ither or his 
 cause to do with them? It seems strange reasoning to 
 charge the Reformation with all this. When Hercules 
 turned the purifying river into King Augeas's stables,^ 
 I have no doubt the confusion that resulted was consid- 
 erable all around: but I think it was not Hercules's 
 blame ; it was some other's blame I The Reformation 
 might bring what results it liked when it came, but 
 the Reformation simply could not help coming. To all 
 Popes and Popes' advocates, expostulating, lamenting 
 and accusing, the answer of the world is : Once for all, 
 your Popehood has 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 it henceforth a thing unbe- 
 
 ^ One of the " Twelve Labors " of Hercules. He turned the 
 river Alpheus through the stables, where three thousand oxen 
 were kept, and cleansed them in a day from the accumulations 
 of many years. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 191 
 
 lievable. 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 Trntb, if we 
 durst pretend to think it true. Away with it ; let 
 whatsoever likes come in the place of it : with it we 
 can have no farther trade ! — Luther and his Protest- 
 antism is not responsible for wars ; the false Simu- 
 lacra that forced him to protest, they are responsible. 
 Luther did what every man that God has made has 
 not only the right, but lies under the sacred duty, to 
 do : answered a Falsehood when it questioned him, 
 Dost thou believe me? — No ! — At what cost soever, 
 without covmting of costs, this thing behoved to be 
 done. Union, organisation spiritual and material, a far 
 nobler than any Popedom or Feudalism in their truest 
 days, I never doubt, is coming for the world ; sure to 
 come. But on Fact alone, not on Semblance and Sim- 
 ulacrum, will it be able either to come, or to stand 
 when come. With union grounded on falsehood, and 
 ordering us to speak and act lies, we will not have any- 
 thing to do. Peace ? A brutal lethargy is peaceable, 
 the noisome grave is peaceable. We hope for a living 
 peace, not a dead one I 
 
 And yet, in prizing justly the indispensable bless- 
 ings of the New, let us not be unjust to the Old. The 
 Old teas true, if it no longer is. In Dante's days it 
 needed no sophistry, self-blinding or other dishonesty, 
 to get itseK 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 
 
192 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 idlest ever started. Very curious : to count-up a few 
 Popish chapels, listen to a few Protestant logic-chop- 
 pings, — to much dull-droning drowsy inanity that still 
 calls itself Protestant, and say : See, Protestantism is 
 daad ; Popeism is more alive than it, will be alive 
 after it ! — Drowsy inanities, not a few, that call them- 
 selves Protestant are dead ; but Protestantism has 
 not died yet, that I hear of ! Protestantism, if we will 
 look, has in these days produced its Goethe, its Napo- 
 leon ; German Literature and 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 chajjels ; welcome to do so, 
 to all lengths. Popery cannot come back, any more 
 than Paganism can, — ichich also still lingers in some 
 countries. But, indeed, it is with these things, as with 
 the ebbing of the sea: you look at the waves oscillat- 
 ing hithei', thither on the beach ; for minutes you can- 
 not 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 Eu- 
 rope than the poor old Pope's revival ! Thor may as 
 soon try to revive. — And withal this oscillation has a 
 meaning. The poor old Popehood will not die away 
 entirely, as Thor has done, for some time yet ; nor 
 ought it. We may say, the Old never dies till this 
 happen. Till all the soul of good that was in it have 
 got itself transfused into the practical New. While 
 a good work remains capable of being done by the 
 Romish form ; or, what is inclusive of all, while a 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 193 
 
 pious life remains cai:)able of being led by it, just so 
 long, if we consider, will this or the other human soul 
 adopt it, go about as a living witness of it. So long it 
 will obtrude itself on the eye of us who reject it, till 
 we in our practice too have appropriated whatsoever 
 of truth was in it. Then, but also not till then, it will 
 have no charm more for any man. It lasts here for a 
 purpose. Let it last as long as it can. — 
 
 Of Luther I will add now, in reference to all these 
 wars and bloodshed, the noticeable fact that none 
 of them began so long as he continued living.^ The 
 conti'oversy 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 Protestants, 
 of what rank or function soever, looking much to him 
 for guidance : and he held it peaceable, continued firm 
 at the centre of it. A man to do this must have a 
 kingly faculty : he must have the gift to discern at 
 all turns where the true heart of the matter lies, and 
 to plant himself courageously on that, as a strong 
 true man, that other true men may rally round him 
 there. He will not continue leader of men otherwise. 
 Luther's clear deep force of judgment, his force of all 
 sorts, of silence, of tolerance and moderation, amon^ 
 others, are very notable in these circumstances. 
 
 ^ It was not until 1537 that Luther put away finally all hopes 
 of reconciliation with the Church. 
 
194 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Tolerance, I say ; a very genuine kind of tolerance : 
 he distinguishes what is essential, and what is not ; the 
 unessential 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 
 wise course, and all men follow him in that. Luther's 
 Written AYorks give similar testimony of him. The 
 dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for 
 us ; but one still reads them with a singidar attraction. 
 And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still 
 legible enough ; Luther's merit in literary history is 
 of the greatest : liis dialect became the language of all 
 writing. They are not well written, these Four-and- 
 twenty Quartos of his ; written hastily, with quite 
 other than literary objects. But in no Books have I 
 found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty 
 of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homehness, 
 
 ^ He carried Luther's views to extremes in his radical opposi- 
 tion to priests and churches, resulting in riotous outbreaks in 
 Luther's absence from Wittenberg. Luther on his return liad 
 much difficulty in restraining tliese excesses. 
 
 2 At Miinster (1532), So-called as denying the validity of in- 
 fant baptism and requiring adults to be baptized again (Gr. avi 
 = again). 
 
 8 Against the Nobles and Clergy (1525), opposed by Luther. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 195 
 
 simplicity ; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He 
 flashes-out illumination from him ; his smiting idio- 
 matic 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 loork an Epic Poem, not write 
 one. I call him a great Thinker ; as indeed his great- 
 ness of heart already betokens that. 
 
 Richter says of Luther's words, ' his words are half- 
 battles.' They may be called so. The essential quality 
 of him was, that he could fight and conquer ; that he 
 was a right piece of human Valour. No more valiant 
 man, no mortal heart to be called braver, that one 
 has i-ecord of, ever lived in tliat 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 writ- 
 ings, this turns-up ; and a most small sneer has been 
 grounded on it by some. In the room of the Wartburg i 
 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, abstinence from food : there rose before him 
 some hideous indefinable Image, which he took for the 
 Evil One, to forbid his work : Luther started-up, 
 
 ^ Near Eisenacli, an ancient residence and fortress, where, 
 immediately after the Diet of Worms, Luther was carried by the 
 Elector's troops for protection against violence from the Papal 
 party : about one hundred and thirty miles NNE of Worms. 
 
196 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 with fiend-defiance ; flung his inkstand at the spectre, 
 and it disappeared ! The spot still remains there ; a 
 curious monument of several things. Any apothecary's 
 apprentice can now tell us what we are to think of 
 this apparition, in a scientific sense : but the man's 
 heart that dare rise defiant, face to face, against Hell 
 itself, can give no higher proof of fearlessness. The 
 thing he will quail before exists not on this Earth or 
 under it. — Fearless enough ! ' The Devil is aware,' 
 writes he on one occasion, ' that this does not proceed 
 out of fear in me. I have seen and defied innumer- 
 able Devils. Duke George,' of Leipzig, a great enemy 
 of his, ' Duke George is not equal to one DeAal,' — 
 far short of a Devil ! ' If I had business at Leipzig, 
 I would ride into LeijDzig, though it rained Duke- 
 Georges for nine days running.' What a reservoir of 
 Dukes to ride into ! — 
 
 At the same time, they err greatly who imagine 
 that this man's courage was ferocity, mere coarse dis- 
 obedient obstinacy and savagery, as many do. Far 
 from that. There may be an absence of fear which 
 arises from the absence of thought or affection, from 
 the presence of hatred and stupid fury. We do not 
 value the courage of the tiger highly I With Luther it 
 was far otherwise ; no accusation could be more unjust 
 than this of mere ferocious violence brought against 
 him. A most gentle heart withal, full of pity and 
 love, as indeed the truly valiant heart ever is. The 
 tiger before a stronger foe — flies: the tiger is not 
 what we call valiant, only fierce and cruel. I know few 
 things more touching than those soft breathings of 
 affection, soft as a child's or a mother's, in this great 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 197 
 
 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 outcome of preeminent 
 thoughtf vd gentleness, affections too keen and fine ? It is 
 the course such men as the poor Poet Cowperi fall into. 
 Luther to a slight observer might have seemed a timid, 
 weak man ; modesty, affectionate shrinking tenderness 
 the chief distinction of him. It is a noble valour which 
 is roused in a heart like this, once stirred-up into 
 defiance, aU kindled into a heavenly blaze. 
 
 In Luther's Table- Talk, a posthumous Book of anec- 
 dotes and sayings collected by his friends, the most 
 interesting now of all the Books proceeding from him, 
 we have many beautiful unconscious displays of the 
 man, and what sort of nature he had. His behaviour 
 at the deathbed of his little Daughter, so still, so 
 great 'and loving, is among the most affecting things. 
 He is resigned that his little Magdalene should die, 
 yet longs inexpressibly that she might live ; — follows, 
 in awestruck thought, the flight of her little soul 
 through those unknown realms. Awestruck ; most 
 heartfelt, we can see; and sincere, — for after aU 
 dogmatic creeds and articles, he feels what nothing 
 it is that we know, or can know: His little Magda- 
 lene shall be with God, as God wills ; for Luther too 
 that is all ; Islam is all. 
 
 Once he looks-out from his solitary Patmos,^ the 
 
 1 Under the shadow of melancholia, or worse, all his life 
 (1731-1800). 
 
 2 The name of an island in the ^gean Sea, where John the 
 
198 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Castle of Coburg,^ in the middle of the night : The 
 great vault of Immensity, long flights of clouds sail- 
 ing through it, — dumb, gaunt, huge : — who snp- 
 ports all that ? " None ever saw the pillars of it ; yet 
 it is supported." God supports it. We must know 
 that God is great, that God is good ; and trust, 
 where we cannot see. — Returning home from Leip- 
 zig 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 wav- 
 ing there, — the meek Earth, at God's kind bidding, 
 has produced it once again ; the bread of man ! — In 
 the garden at Wittenberg one evening at sunset, a 
 little bird has perched for the night : That little bird, 
 says Luther, above it are the stars and deep Heaven 
 of worlds ; yet it has folded its little wings ; gone 
 trustfully to rest there as in its home : the Maker of 
 
 it has given it too a home ! Neither are mirthful 
 
 turns wanting : there is a great free human heart in 
 this man. The common speech of him has a rugged 
 nobleness, idiomatic, expressive, genuine ; gleams here 
 and there with beautiful poetic tints. One feels him 
 to be a great brother man. His love of Music, indeed, 
 is not this, as it were, the summary of all these affec- 
 tions in him ? Many a wild unutterability he spoke- 
 forth from him in the tones of his flute. The Devils 
 fled from his flute, he says. Death-defiance on the 
 one hand, and such love of music on the other ; I 
 
 Apostle, in banishment " for the testimony of Jesus Christ," saw 
 the vision recorded in the book of Revelation. 
 
 ^ Where Luther lived for several months in 1530, and wrote 
 his famous hymn, Einfeste Burg. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 199 
 
 could call these the two opposite poles of a great soul ; 
 between these two all great things had room. 
 
 Luther's face is to me expressive of him ; in Kra- 
 nach's ^ best portraits I find the true Luther. A rude 
 plebeian face ; with its huge crag-like brows and bones, 
 the emblem of rugged energy ; at first, almost a re- 
 pidsive face. Yet in the eyes especially there is a wild 
 silent sorrow ; an unnamable melancholy, the element 
 of all gentle and fine affections ; giving to the rest 
 the true stamp of nobleness. Laughter was in this 
 Luther, as we said ; but tears also were there. Tears 
 also were appointed him ; tears and hard toil. The 
 basis of his life was Sadness, Earnestness. In his lat- 
 ter days, after all triumphs and victoines, he expresses 
 himself heartily weary of living ; he considers that 
 God alone can and wiU regulate the course thingSjjare 
 taking, and that perhaps the Day of Judgment is not 
 far. As for him, he longs for one thing : that God 
 woidd release him from his labour, and let him depart 
 and be at rest. They understand little of the man 
 who cite this in discveAit of him ! — I will call this 
 Luther a true Great Man ; great in intellect, in cour- 
 age, affection and integrity ; one of our most lovable 
 and precious men. Great, not as a hewn obelisk ; but 
 as an Alpine mountain, — so simple, honest, sponta- 
 neous, not setting-up to be great at all ; there for quite 
 another purpose than being great! Ah yes, unsubdu- 
 able granite, piercing far and wide into the Heavens ; 
 yet in the clefts of it fountains, green beautifu^l val- 
 leys with flowers ! A right Spiritual Hero and Pro- 
 
 * Intimate friend of Luther (1472-1553), court painter to 
 three Electors of Saxony. 
 
200 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 phet ; once more, a true Son of Nature and Fact, for 
 
 whom these centuries, and many that are to come yet, 
 will be thankful to Heaven.^ 
 
 The most interesting phasis which the Reformation 
 anywhere assumes, especially for us English, is that of 
 Puritanism. In Luther's own country Protestantism 
 soon dwindled into a rather barren affair : not a re- 
 ligion or faith, but rather now a theological jangling 
 of ai'gument, the proper seat of it not the heart; the 
 essence of it sceptical contention : which indeed has 
 jangled more and more, 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 Presbyterianism 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 Pi'otestantism that ever got to the rank 
 of being a Faith, a true heart-communication with 
 Heaven, and of exhibiting itself in History as such. 
 We must spare a few words for Knox ; himself a 
 brave and remarkable man ; but still more important 
 as Chief Priest and Founder, which one may consider 
 him to be, of the Faith that became Scotland's, New 
 England's, Oliver Cromwell's. History wiU have some- 
 thing to say about this, for some time to come ! 
 
 1 Luther died in the town of his birth, 1546, and lies buried 
 in the church at Wittenberg on the door of which he nailed his 
 ninety-five theses. 
 
 2 King of Sweden from 1611 until his death in 1632 ; leader 
 of the Protestant forces in the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 201 
 
 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 
 strength, well understood, is the measure of all worth. 
 Give a thing time ; if it can succeed, it is a right 
 thing. Look now at American Saxondom ; and at that 
 little Fact of the sailing of the Mayflower, two-hundred 
 years ago, from Delft Haven in 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 gTeat continents. For it was 
 properly the beginning of America : there were strag- 
 gling 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, determine on settling in 
 the New World. Black untamed forests are there, 
 and wild savage creatures ; but not so cruel as Star- 
 chamber ^ hangmen. They thought the Earth would 
 yield them food, if they tilled honestly ; the everlasting 
 heaven would stretch, there too, overhead ; they should 
 be left in peace, to prepare for Eternity by living well 
 in this world of Time ; worshipping in what they 
 thought the true, not the idolatrous way. They clubbed 
 
 1 It was the Speedwell that sailed from Delft Haven ; when 
 she was abandoned at Plymouth (England) those of her passen- 
 gers that had not lost courage were taken on board the May- 
 flower. 
 
 2 An English court, abolished in 16-10, that decided cases on 
 its own arbitrary authority instead of according to common law. 
 
202 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 ceremony of their departure : solemnity, we might 
 call it rather, for it was a real act of worship. Their 
 minister went down with them to the beach, and their 
 brethren whom they were to leave behind; all joined 
 in solemn prayer, That Gt)d would have pity on His 
 poor children, and rjo with them into tliat waste wilder- 
 ness, for He also had made that, He was there also as 
 well as here. — Hah ! These men, I think, had a work! 
 The weak thing, weaker than a child, becomes strong 
 one day, if it be a true thing. Puritanisni was only 
 despicable, laughable then ; but nobody can manage to 
 laugh at it now. Puritanism has got weajsons and 
 sinews ; it has fire-arms, war-navies ; it has cunning in 
 its ten fingers, strength in its right arm ; it can steer 
 ships, fell forests, remove mountains ; — it is one of 
 the strongest things under this sun at present ! 
 
 In the history of Scotland, too, I can find properly 
 but one epoch: we may say, it contains nothing of 
 world-interest at all but this Reformation by Knox. 
 A poor barren country, full of continual broils, dissen- 
 sions, massacrings : a people in the last state of rudeness 
 and destitution, little better perhaps than Ireland at 
 this day. Hungry fierce barons, not so much as able 
 to form any arrangement with each other how to 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 gib- 
 1 Neal (London, 1755), i. 490. (Carlyle's note.) 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 203 
 
 bets : this is a historical spectacle of no very singular 
 significance ! ' Bravery ' enough, I doubt not ; fierce 
 fio-htino; in abundance : but not bi-aver or fiercer than 
 that of their old Scandinavian Sea-king" ancestors ; 
 whose exploits we have not found worth dwelling on ! 
 It is a country as yet without a soul : nothing developed 
 in it but what is rude, external, semi-animal. And 
 now at the Reformation, the internal life is kindled, as 
 it were, imder the ribs of this 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 believing 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 lilce will 
 be again seen, under wider forms than the Presbyte- 
 rian : there can be no lasting good done till then. — 
 Impossible ! say some. Possible ? Has it not 6ee;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 work and fruit of such ! — 
 
 * Strains that might create a soul 
 Under the ribs of death. Comus, 561, 562. 
 ^ The Presbyterian creed, promulgated by the Puritans in 1646. 
 
204 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 i-ougher. 
 On the whole, cheap at any price ; — as life is. 
 The people began to live: they needed first of all to 
 do that, at what cost and costs soever. Scotch Litera- 
 ture and Thought, Scotch Industry ; James Watt,^ 
 David Hume,2 AValter Scott, Robert Burns: I find 
 Knox and the Reformation acting in the heart's core 
 of every one of these persons and phenomena : I find 
 that without the Reforination they would not have 
 been. Or what of Scotland ? The Puritanism of Scot- 
 land became that of England, of New England. A 
 tumult in the High Church of Edinburgh ^ spread into 
 a universal battle and struggle over all these realms ; 
 — there came out, after fifty -years struggling, what we 
 all call the ' Gloriovs Revolution,' * a Habeas- Corpus ^ 
 Act, Free Parliaments, and much else ! — Alas, is it 
 not too true what we said, That many men in the van 
 do always, like Russian soldiers march into the ditch 
 of Schweidnitz, and fiU it up with their dead bodies, 
 
 1 Of steam-engine fame (1736-1819). 
 
 ^ Philosopher and historian (1711-1776). 
 
 ^ St. Giles's, July 23, 1637, when Jenny Geddes, so tradition 
 reports, threw her folding stool at the officiating bishop in 
 protest against the introduction of the Anglican order of service. 
 
 * Of 1688, in opposition to the tyranny and Roman Catholicism 
 of James II ; resulting in the establishment of a purer constitu- 
 tional government, and the accession to the throne of William of 
 Orange and INIary (James's daughter). Compare p. 205, n. 2. 
 
 ^ " Thou shalt have the body," of a person, confined on any 
 charge, brought before a magistrate, to examine whether he is 
 lawfully deprived of his liberty. 
 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 205 
 
 that the rear may pass-over them dry-shotl, and gain 
 the honour ? How many earnest nigged Cromwells, 
 Knoxes, poor Peasant Covenanters/ wrestling, battling 
 for very life, in rough miry places, have to struggle, 
 and suffer, and fall, greatly censured, be?nired, — be- 
 fore 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 have crouched into the corner, like 
 so many others ; Scotland had not been delivered ; and 
 Knox had been without blame. He is the one Scotch- 
 man to whom, of all others, his country and the world 
 owe a debt. He has to plead that Scotland 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 ; 
 
 ^ Signers or adherents to the National Covenant (1638), an 
 agreement to oppose the introduction of the Anglican ritual in 
 Scotcli churches. 
 
 ^ Formal court dress: — "It may seem almost an abuse of 
 terms to call a proceeding, conducted with so much delibera- 
 tion, with so much sobriety, and with such minute attention to 
 proscriptive etiquette, by the terrible name of Revolution." 
 Macaulay, History of England, Chap, x, near end. 
 
 3 See p. 207, n. 2. 
 
 * The persecutions of Queen Mary of England caused him to 
 make the Continent his headquarters from 1554 to 1559- Com- 
 pare p. 104, n. 5. 
 
206 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 was censured, shot-at through his windows ; had a right 
 sore fighting life : if this world were his place of 
 recompense, he had made but a bad venture of it. I 
 cannot apologise for Knox. To him it is very indiffer- 
 ent, these two-hundred-and-fifty 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, for our own sake, ought to 
 look through the rumours and controversies enveloping 
 the man, into the man himself. 
 
 For one thing, I will remark tliat tins post of Pro- 
 phet t© 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 ; ^ 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 
 liis 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 stand- 
 ing siege in St. Andrew's Castle, — when one day in 
 their chapel, the Preacher after finishing his exhorta- 
 tion 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 num- 
 
 ^ He was born in 1505. 
 
 ^ At the University of Glasgow, but took no degree. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 207 
 
 ber, John Knox the name of him, had : Had he not ? 
 said the Preacher, appealing to all the andience : what 
 then is his duty ? The peoj^le 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-np ; he attempted to reply ; he could 
 say no word ; — burst into a flood of tears, and ran 
 out. It is worth remembering, that scene. He was in 
 grievous trouble for some days. He felt what a small 
 faculty was his for this great work. He felt what a 
 baptism he was called to be baptised withal.^ He ' burst 
 into tears.' 
 
 Our primary characteristic of a Hero, that he is sin- 
 cere, applies emphatically to Knox. It is not denied 
 anywhere that this, whatever might be his other qual- 
 ities or faults, is among the truest of men. With a 
 singular instinct he holds to the truth and fact ; the 
 truth alone is there for him, the rest a mere shadow 
 and deceptive nonentity. However feeble, forlorn the 
 reality may seem, on that and that only can he take 
 his stand. In the Galleys of the River Loire, whither 
 Knox and the others, after their Castle of St. An- 
 drew's was taken, had been sent as Galley-slaves, ^ — 
 some officer or priest, one day, presented them an Image 
 of the Virgin Mother, requiring that they, the blas- 
 phemous heretics, should do it reverence. Mother? 
 Mother of God ? said Knox, when the turn came to 
 him : This is no Mother of God : this is ' a pented 
 
 ^ But I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I 
 straitened till it be accnmpIMied ! Lnke xii, 50. 
 
 2 On charge of being concerned in the assassination of Cardi- 
 nal Beatoun, Knox was in the galleys two years. 
 
208 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 hredd,' — a piece of wood, I tell you, with paint on 
 it I 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 a 
 'pentcd hredd ; worship it he would not. 
 
 He told his fellow-prisoners, in this darkest time, to 
 be of courage ; the Cause they had was the true one, 
 and must and would prosper ; the whole world could not 
 put it down. Keality is of God's making; it is alone 
 strong. How many 'pcnted hredd s, pretending to be 
 real, are fitter to swim than to be worshipped ! — This 
 Knox cannot live but by fact : he clings to reality as 
 the shipwrecked sailor to the cliff. He is an instance 
 to us how a man, by 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 sin- 
 cerity, as we say, he has no superior ; nay, one might 
 ask, What equal he has ? The heart of him is of the 
 true Prophet cast. " He lies there," said the Earl of 
 Morton 1 at his grave, " who never feared the face of 
 man," He resembles, more than any of tlie moderns, 
 an Old-Hebrew Prophet. The same inflexibility, intol- 
 erance, rigid narrow-looking adherence to God's truth, 
 stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake 
 truth : an Old-Hebrew Prophet in the guise of an 
 Edinburgh Minister of the Sixteenth Century. We 
 are to take him for that ; not require him to be other. 
 1 Regent 1572-1577, executed 1581. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 209 
 
 Knox's conduct to Queen Mary,^ the harsh visits he 
 used to make in her own palace, to i-eprove her there, 
 have been much commented upon. Such cruelty, such 
 coarseness fills us with indignation. On reading the 
 actual narrative of the business, what Knox said, and 
 what Knox meant, I must say one's tragic feeling is 
 rather disappointed. They are not so coarse, these 
 speeches ; they seem to me about as fine as the circum- 
 stances would permit ! Knox was not there to do the 
 courtier ; he came on another errand. Whoever, read- 
 ing these colloquies of his with the Queen, thinks they 
 are vulgar insolences of a plebeian priest to a deHcate 
 high lady, mistakes the purport and essence of them 
 altogether. It was unfortunately not possible to be 
 polite with the Queen of Scotland, unless one proved 
 untrue to the. Nation and Cause of Scotland. A man 
 who did not wish to see the land of his birth made a 
 hunting-field for intriguing ambitious Guises,^ and the 
 Cause of God trampled underfoot of Falsehoods, For- 
 mulas 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 Scot- 
 land : 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 her- 
 self was not without sharpness enough, among her other 
 / ^ The beautiful, accomplished, and altogether inscrutable Mary 
 Stuart, Queen of Scots. Born 1542, beheaded 1587 ; of Roman 
 Catholic faith, and of French-bred gayety of manner. 
 
 2 The mother of the Queen was a daughter of the French ducal 
 house of Guise. 
 
210 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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," an- 
 swered 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 ?<7iessential ; and to see well what that is. 
 Tolerance has to be noble, measured, just in its very 
 wrath, when it can tolerate no longer. But, on the 
 whole, we are not altogether here to tolerate ! We are 
 here to resist, to control and vanquish withal. We do 
 not ' tolerate ' Falsehoods, Thieveries, 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. 
 
 A man sent to row in French Galleys, and suchlike, 
 for teaching the Truth in his own land, cannot always 
 be in the mildest humour ! I am not prepared to say 
 that Knox had a soft temper ; nor do I know that he 
 had what we call an ill temper. An iU nature he de- 
 cidedly 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 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 211 
 
 of virtual Presidency and Sovereignty in that wild 
 realm, he who was only ' a subject born within 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 pulling-down cathedrals, and so forth, as if he 
 were a seditious rioting demagogue : precisely the 
 reverse is seen to be the fact, in regard to 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. Tu- 
 mult was not his element ; it was the tragic feature of 
 his life that he was forced to dwell so much in that. 
 Every 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 Z)isorder. Order is 
 Truth, — each thing standing on the basis that belongs 
 to it : Order and Falsehood cannot subsist together. 
 
 Withal, unexpectedly enough, this Knox has a vein 
 of drollery in him ; which I like much, in combination 
 with his other qualities. He has a true eye for the 
 ridiculous. . His History, with its rough earnestness, is 
 curiously enlivened with this. When the two Prelates, 
 entering Glasgow Cathedral, quarrel about precedence ; 
 march rapidly up, take to hustling one another, twitch- 
 ing one another's rochets,^ and at last flourishing their 
 crosiers 2 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, 
 
 *■ A vestment worn usually by bishops. 
 
 "^ A bishop's staff. ^ He calls it " a merry game." 
 
212 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 illuminating laugh mounts-up over the earnest visage ; 
 not a loud laugh ; you would say, a laugh in the eyes 
 most of all. An honest-hearted, brotherly man ; brother 
 to the high, brother also to the low ; sincere in his sym- 
 pathy with both. He had his pipe ^ of Bordeaux too, 
 we find, in that old Edinburgh house of his ; a cheery 
 social man, with faces that loved him ! They go far 
 wrong who think this Knox was a gloomy, spasmodic, 
 shrieking fanatic. Not at all : he is one of the solidest 
 of men. Practical, cautious-hopeful, patient ; a most 
 shrewd, observing, quietly discerning man. In fact, he 
 has very much the type of character we assign to the 
 Scotch at present : a certain sardonic taciturnity is in 
 him ; insight enough ; and a stouter heart than he him- 
 self knows of. He has the power of holding his peace 
 over many things which do not vitally concern him, — 
 "They? what are they?" But the thing which does 
 vitally concern him, that thing he will speak of ; and 
 in a tone the whole world shall be made to hear : all 
 the more emphatic for his long silence. 
 
 This Prophet of the Scotcli is to me no hateful man ! 
 — He had a sore fight of an existence ; wrestling with 
 Popes and Principalities ; in defeat, contention, life- 
 long struggle ; rowing as a galley-slave, wandering as 
 an exile. A sore fight: but he won it. "Have you 
 hope ? " they asked him in his last moment, when he 
 could no longer speak. He lifted his finger, ' pointed 
 upwards with his finger,' and so died.^ Honour to 
 him ! His works have not died. The letter of his work 
 dies, as of all men's ; but the spirit of it never. 
 
 ^ A measure of wine, — one hundred gallons and upwards. 
 2 1572. 
 
THE HERO AS PRIEST 213 
 
 One word more as to the letter of Knox's work. 
 The unforgivable offence in him is, that he wished to 
 set-up Priests over the head of Kings. In other words, 
 he strove to make the Government of Scotland a Theo- 
 cracy. 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 un- 
 consciously, mean a Theocracy, or Government of God. 
 He did mean that Kings and Prime Ministers, and all 
 manner of persons, in public or private, diplomatising 
 or whatever else they might be doing, should walk 
 according to the Gospel of Christ, and understand that 
 this was their Law, supreme over aU laws. He hoped 
 once to see such a thing realised ; and the Petition, 
 Thy Kingdom come., no longer an empty word. He 
 was sore grieved when he saw greedy worldly Barons 
 clutch hold of the Church's j)roperty ; when he ex- 
 postulated that it was not secular property, that it 
 was spiritual property, and should be turned to true 
 churchly uses, education, schools, worship ; — and the 
 Regent Murray ^ had to answer, with a shrug of the 
 shoulders, " It is a devout imagination ! " 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 
 imagination ' still. But how shall we blame h'lm for 
 struggling to realise it? Theocracy, Government of 
 God, is precisely the thing to be struggled for ! All 
 
 1 Half-brother of Mary, leader of the Protestant party, Re- 
 gent from 1567, murdered 1570. 
 
214 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Prophets, zealous Priests, are there for that purpose. 
 Hildebrand ^ wished a Theocracy ; Cromwell wished it, 
 fought for it ; Mahomet attained it. Nay, is it not 
 what all zealous men, whether called Priests, Prophets, 
 or whatsoever else called, do essentially wish, and must 
 wish? That right and truth, or God's Law, reign 
 supreme among men, this is the Heavenly Ideal (well 
 named in Knox's time, and namable in all times, a 
 revealed ' Will of God '} towards which the Reformer 
 will insist that all be more and more approximated. 
 All 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 
 Practice, and at what point our impatience with their 
 non-introduction ought to begin, is always a question. 
 I think we may say safely. Let them introduce them- 
 selves as far as they can contrive to do it ! If they are 
 the true faith of men, all men ought to be more or less 
 impatient always where they are not found introduced. 
 There will never be wanting Regent-Murray s enough 
 to shrug their shoulders, and say, " A devout imagi- 
 nation I " We will praise the Hero-Priest rather, who 
 does^jkvhat is in him to bring them in ; and wears-out, 
 in toil, calumny, contradiction, a noble life, to make 
 a God's Kingdom of this Earth. The Earth will not 
 become too godlike ! 
 
 ^ Gregory VII, Pope 1073-1085 ; stoutly defended the suprem- 
 acy of the Church against the power of the Emperor, Henry IV. 
 
LECTURE V 
 
 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUS- 
 SEAU, BURNS 
 
 [Tuesday, 19th May 1840.] 
 
 Hero-gods, Prophets, Poets, Priests are forms of 
 Heroism that belong to the old ages, make their ap- 
 pearance in the remotest times ; some of them have 
 ceased to be possible long since, and cannot any more 
 show themselves in this world. The Hero as Man of 
 Letters, again, of which class we are to speak today, 
 is altogether a product of these new ages ; and so long 
 as the wondrous art of Writing, or of Ready- writing 
 which we call Printing, subsists, he may be expected 
 to continue, as one of the main forms of Heroism for 
 all future ages. He is, in various respects, a very 
 singular phenomenon. 
 
 He ,is new, I say ; he has hardly lasted above a 
 century in the world yet. Never, till about a hundred 
 years ago, was there seen any figure of a Great Soul 
 living apart in that anomalous manner ; endeavouring 
 to speak-forth the inspiration that was in him by 
 Printed Books, and find place and subsistence by 
 what the world would please to give him for doing 
 that. Much had been sold and bought, and left to 
 make its own bargain in the marketplace ; but the 
 inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul never till then, in 
 that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and 
 
216 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 copy-wrongs, in liis squalid garret, in his rusty'coat ; 
 ruling (for this is what he does), from his grave, after 
 death, whole nations and generations who woidd, or 
 would not, give him bread while living, — is a rather 
 curious spectacle ! Few shapes of Heroism can be 
 more unexpected. 
 
 Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp him- 
 self into strange shapes : the world knows not well at 
 any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect 
 in the world ! It seemed absurd to us, that men, in 
 their rude admiration, should take some wise great 
 Odin for a god, and worshiji liiin as such ; some wise 
 great Mahomet for one god-inspired, and religiously 
 follow his Law for twelve centuries ; but that a wise 
 great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, shoidd be taken 
 for some idle nondescript, extant in the world to amuse 
 idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown 
 him, that he might live thereby ; this perhaps, as be- 
 fore 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 modern 
 person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all. 
 What he teaches, the whole world will do and make. 
 The world's manner of dealing with him is the most 
 significant feature of the world's general position. 
 Looking well at his life, we may get a glance, as deep 
 as is readily possible for us, into the life of those sin- 
 gular centuries which have produced him, in which we 
 ourselves live and work. 
 
 There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine ; 
 as in every kind there is a genuine and a spurious. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 217 
 
 If Hero be taken to mean genuine, then I say the 
 Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a 
 function for us which 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 in- 
 spired soul of him ; aU that a man, in any case, can 
 do. I say insjjired ; for what we call 'originality,' 
 ' sincerity,' ' genius,' the heroic quality we have no good 
 name for, signifies that. The Hero is he who lives in 
 the inward sphere of things, in the True, Divine and 
 Eternal, which ■ exists always, unseen to most, under 
 the Temporary, Trivial : his being is in that ; he de- 
 clares that abroad, by act or speech as it may be, in 
 declaring himself abroad* His life, as we said before, 
 is a piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself : all 
 men's life is, — but the weak many know not the fact, 
 and are untrue to it, in most times ; the strong few 
 are strong, heroic, perennial, because it cannot be 
 hidden from them. The Man of Letters, like every 
 Hero, is there to proclaim this in such sort as he can. 
 Intrinsically it is the same function which the old 
 generations named a man Prophet, Priest, Divinity for 
 doing ; "which all manner of Heroes, by speech or by 
 act, are sent into the world to do. 
 
 Ficlite 1 the German Philosopher delivered, some 
 forty years ago at Erlangen,^ a highly remarkable 
 Course of Lectures on this 'subject: ' Ueher das 
 Wesen des Gelehrten, On the Nature of the Literary 
 Man.' Fichte, in conformity with the Transcendental 
 Philosophy, of which he was a distinguished teacher, 
 
 1 1762-1848. 
 
 ^ University town in Bavaria. 
 
218 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 declares first : That all things which we see or work 
 with in this Earth, especially we ourselves and all 
 persons, are as a kind of vesture or sensuous Appear- 
 ance : that under all there lies, as the essence of them, 
 what he calls the ' Divine Idea of the World ; ' this is 
 the Reality which 'lies at the bottom of all Appearance.' 
 To the mass of men no such Divine Idea is recognis- 
 able in the world ; they live merely, says Fichte, among 
 the superficialities, practicalities and shows of the 
 world, not dreaming that there is anything divine 
 under them. But 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 itwiU manifest itself in a new dialect; and 
 he is there for the purpose of doing that. Such, is 
 Fichte's phraseology ; with which we need not quarrel. 
 It is his way of naming what I here, by other words, 
 am striving imperfectly to name ; what there is at 
 present no name for : The unspeakable Divine Signi- 
 ficance, full of splendour, of wonder and terror, that 
 lies in the being of every man, of every thing, — the 
 Presence of the God who made every man, and thing. 
 Mahomet taught this in his dialect ; Odin in his : it 
 is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect 
 or another, are here to teach. 
 
 Fichte calls the Man of Letters, therefore, a Prophet, 
 or as he prefers to phrase it, a Priest, continually 
 unfolding the Godlike to men : Men of Letters are a 
 perpetual Priesthood, from age to age, teaching all 
 men that a God is still present in their life ; that all 
 ' Appearance,' whatsoever we see in the world, is but 
 as a vesture for the ' Divine Idea of the World,' for 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 219 
 
 * that which lies at the bottom of Appearance.' 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 a sacred 
 Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste 
 of Time.^ Fichte discriminates with sharp zeal the true 
 Literary Man, what we here call the Hero as Man of 
 lictters, from multitudes of false unheroic. Whoever 
 lives not wholly in this Divine Idea, or living partially 
 in it, struggles not, as for the one good, to live wholly 
 in it, — he is, let him live where else he like, in what 
 pomps and prosperities he like, no Literary Man ; he 
 is, says Fichte, a ' Bungler, Stibnjjer.'' Or at best, if 
 he belong to the prosaic provinces, he may be a ' Hod- 
 man ; ' Fichte even calls him elsewhere a ' Nonentity,' 
 and has in short no mercy for hun, no wish that he 
 should continue happy among us ! This is Fichte's 
 notion of the Man of Letters. It means, in its own 
 form, precisely what we here mean. 
 
 In this point of view, I consider that, for the last 
 hundred years, by far the notablest of all Literary Men 
 is Fichte's countryman, Goethe. To that man too, in 
 a strange way, there was given what we may call a life 
 in the Divine Idea of the World ; vision of the inward 
 divine mystery : and strangely, out of his Books, the 
 world rises imaged once more as godlike, the work- 
 manship and temple of a God. Illuminated all, not 
 in fierce impure fire-splendour as of Mahomet, but in 
 mild celestial radiance ; — really a Prophecy in these 
 
 ^ And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, 
 to lead them the way ; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give 
 them light. Exod. xiii, 21. 
 
220 LECTWRES ON HEROES 
 
 most unprophetic times ; to my mind, by far the great- 
 est, though one of the quietest, among all the great 
 things that have come to pass in them. Our chosen 
 specimen of the Hero as Literary Man would be this 
 Goethe.^ And it were a very pleasant plan for me 
 here to discourse of his heroism : for I consider him to 
 be a true Hero ; heroic in what he said and did, and 
 perhaps still more 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 lulndred-and-fifty years. 
 
 But at present, such is the general state of know- 
 ledge about Goethe, it were worse than useless to 
 attempt speaking of him in this case. Speak as I 
 might, Goethe, to the great majority of you, would 
 remain problematic, vague ; no impression but a false 
 one could be realised. Him we must leave to future 
 times. Johnson, Burns, Rousseau, three great figures 
 from a prior time, from a far inferior state of circum- 
 stances, will suit us better here. Three men of the 
 Eighteenth Century ; the conditions of their life far 
 more resemble what those of ours still are in England, 
 than what Goethe's in Germany were. Alas, these 
 men did not conquer like him ; they fought bravely, 
 and fell. They were not heroic bringers of the light, 
 but heroic seekers of it. They lived under galling 
 conditions ; struggling as under mouirtains of impedi- 
 
 1 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832. The Correspond- 
 ence between Goethe and Carlyle was published in 1887. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 221 
 
 ment, and could not unfold themselves into clearness, 
 or victorious interpretation of that ' Divine Idea.' It 
 is rather the Tombs of three Literary 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 iU 
 many arranged forces of society fulfil their work ; 
 how many powerful forces are seen working in a 
 wasteful, chaotic, altogether unarranged manner. It 
 is too just a complaint, as we all know. But perhaps 
 if we look at this of Books and the AVriters of Books, 
 we shall find here, as it were, the summary of all other 
 disorganisation ; — a sort of heart, from which, and 
 to which, all other confusion circulates in the world ! 
 Considering what Book-writers do in the world, and 
 what the world does with Book-writers, I should say, 
 It is the most anomalous thing the world at present 
 has to show. — We should get into a sea far beyond 
 sounding, did we attempt to give account of this ; but 
 we must glance at it for the sake of our subject. The 
 worst element in the life of these three Literary 
 Heroes was, that they found their business and posi- 
 tion such a chaos. On the beaten road there is toler- 
 able travelling ; but it is sore work, and many have to 
 perish, fashioning a path through the impassable ! 
 
 Our pious Fathers, feeling well what importance lay 
 in the speaking of man to men, foimded churches, 
 made endowments, regulations ; everywhere in the 
 
222 LECTXTRES ON HEROES 
 
 civilised world there is a Pulpit, environed with all 
 manner of complex dignified appurtenances and fur- 
 therances, that therefrom a man with the tongue may, 
 to best advantage, address his fellow-men. They felt 
 that this was the most important thing ; that without 
 this there was no good thing. It is a right pious work, 
 that of theirs ; beautiful to behold ! But now with 
 the art of Writing, with the art of Printing, a total 
 change has come over that business. The Writer of a 
 Book, is not he a Preacher preaching not to this par- 
 ish or that, on this day or that, but to all men in all 
 times and places ? Surely it is of the last importance 
 that he do his work right, whoever do it wrong ; — 
 that the eye report not falsely, for then all the other 
 members are astray ! Well ; how he may do his work, 
 whether he do it right or wrong, or do it at all, is a 
 point which no man in the world has taken the pains 
 to think of. To a certain shopkeeper, trying to get 
 some money for his books, if lucky, he is of some im- 
 portance ; 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 mis- 
 guidance ! 
 
 Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miracu- 
 lous of all things man has devised. Odin's Runes were 
 the .first form of the work of a Hero ; Books, written 
 
 ^ And he will be a wild man ; his hand will be against every 
 man, and every man's hand against him (said of Ishmael); 
 Gen. xvi, 12. See p. 68, n. 3. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS, 223 
 
 words, are still miraculous I2unes, the latest form ! 
 In Books lies the soul of the whole Past Time ; the 
 articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and 
 material substance of it has altogether vanished like a 
 dream. Mighty fleets and armies, harbours and arse- 
 nals, vast cities, high-domed, many-engined, — they are 
 precious, great : but what do they become ? Agamem- 
 non, the many Agamemnons, Pericleses, and their 
 Greece; all is gone now to some ruined fragments, 
 dumb mournful wrecks and blocks: but the Books of 
 Greece ! There Greece, to every thinker, still very 
 literally lives ; can be called-up again into life. No 
 magic Rune is stranger than a Book. All that Man- 
 kind has done, thought, gained or been : it is lying as 
 in magic preservation in the pages of Books. They 
 are the chosen possession of men. 
 
 Do not Books still accomplish miracles^ as Runes 
 were fabled to do ? They persuade men. Not the 
 wretchedest circulating-library novel, which foolish 
 girls thumb and con in remote villages, but will help 
 to regulate the actual practical weddings and house- 
 holds of those foolish girls. So 'Celia' felt, so ' Clif- 
 ford ' acted : the foolish Theorem of Life, stamped 
 into those young brains, comes out as a solid Practice 
 one day. Consider whether any Rune in the Avildest 
 imagination of Mythologist ever did such wonders as, 
 on the actual firm Earth, some Books have done! 
 What built St. Paul's Cathedral ? Look at the heart 
 of the matter, it was that divine Hebrew Book, — the 
 word partly of the man Moses, an outlaw tending his 
 Midianitish herds, four-thousand years ago, in the 
 wilderness of Sinai ! It is the strangest of things, yet 
 
224 . LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 nothing is truer. With the art of Writing, of which 
 Printing is a simple, an inevitable and comparatively 
 insignificant corollary, the true reign of miracles for 
 mankind commenced. It related, with a wondrous new 
 contiguity and perpetual closeness, the Past and Dis- 
 tant with the Present in time and place ; all times 
 and all places with this our actual Here and Now. 
 All things were altered for men ; all modes of impor- 
 tant work of men : teaching, preaching, governing, and 
 all else. 
 
 To look at Teaching, for instance. Universities are 
 a notable, respectable product of the modern ages. 
 Their existence too is modified, to the very basis of 
 it, by the existence of Books. Universities arose while 
 there were yet no Books procurable ; while a man, 
 for a single Book, had to give an estate of land. That, 
 in those circumstances, when a man had some know- 
 ledge to communicate, he should do it by gathering 
 the learners round him, face to face, was a necessity 
 for him. If you wanted to know what Abe lard ^ knew, 
 you must go and listen to Abelard. Thousands, as 
 many as thirty-thousand, went to hear Abelard and 
 that metaphysical theology of his. And now for any 
 other teacher who had also something of his own to 
 teach, there was a great convenience opened : so many 
 thousands eager to learn were already assembled yon- 
 der ; of all places the best place for him was that. For 
 any third teacher it was better still ; and grew ever 
 the better, the more teachers there came. It only 
 needed now that the King took notice of this new 
 
 ^ French philosopher, theologian, and teacher (1079-1142) ; 
 most famous as the lover of H^loi'se. See Pope's Elaisa to Abelard. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 225 
 
 phenomenon ; combined or agglomerated the various 
 schools into one school ; gave it edifices, privileges, 
 encouragements, and named it Univej'sitas, or School 
 of all Sciences : the University of Paris, in its essential 
 characters, was there. The model of all subsequent 
 Universities ; which down even to these days, for six 
 centuries now, have gone on to found themselves. Such, 
 I conceive, was the origin of Universities. 
 
 It is clear, however, that with this simple circmn- 
 stance, facility of getting Books, the whole conditions 
 of the business from top to bottom were changed. 
 Once invent Printing, you metamorphosed all Uni- 
 versities, or superseded them! The Teacher needed 
 not now to gather men personally round him, that he 
 might sjjeak to them what he knew : print it in a 
 Book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had 
 it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to 
 learn it ! — Doubtless there is still peculiar virtue in 
 Speech ; even writers of Books may still, in some 
 circumstances, find it convenient to speak also, — wit- 
 ness 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 re- 
 main ; to Universities among others. But the limits 
 of the two have nowhere yet been pointed out, ascer- 
 tained ; much less put in practice : the University 
 which wonld 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 
 
226 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 School can do for us, is still but what the first School 
 began doing, — teach us to read. We learn to read, 
 in various languages, in various sciences ; we learn 
 the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But 
 the place where we are to get knowledge, even theo- 
 retic knowledge, is the Books themselves ! It depends 
 on what we read, after all manner of Professors have 
 done their best for us. The true University of these 
 days is a Collection of Books. 
 
 But to the Church itself, as I hinted already, all is 
 changed, in its preaching, in its working, by the intro- 
 duction of Books. The Church is the working recog- 
 nised Union of 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 natu- 
 ral sole method of performing this. But now with 
 Books ! — He that can write a true Book, to persuade 
 England, is not he the Bishop and Archbishop, the 
 Primate of England and of All England ? I many a 
 time say, the writers of Newspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, 
 Books, these are the real working effective Church 
 of a modern country. Nay not only our preaching, 
 but even our worship, is not it too accomplished by 
 means of Printed Books ? The noble 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 aU eoimtries, 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 
 1 See p. 112 n. 1. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 227 
 
 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 
 noble 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 ' apoca- 
 lypse of Nature,' a revealing of the ' open secret.' It 
 may well enough be named, in Fichte's style, a ' con- 
 tinuous revelation ' of the Godlike in the Terrestrial 
 and Common. The Godlike does ever, in very truth, 
 endure there ; is brought out, now in this dialect, now 
 in that, with various degrees of clearness : all true 
 gifted Singers and Speakers are, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, doing so. The dark stormf ul indignation of a 
 Byron, 2 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 wprship of the 
 True. How much more the sphere-harmony of a Shak- 
 speare, 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 
 
 ^ Then flew cue of the seraphims nnto me, having a live coal 
 in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the 
 altar : and lie laid it upon my mouth, . . . Isaiah vi, 6, 7. 
 
 2 1788-1824. See add. note. 3 Voltaire. See p. 20, n. 2. 
 
228 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 nature of worship ; as indeed all true worjdng 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. Witen- 
 »agemote,^ old Parliament, was a gi-eat 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 parlia- 
 mentary debate go on now, everywhere and at aU 
 times, in a far more comprehensive way, out of Parlia- 
 ment altogether? Burke said there were Three Es- 
 tates ^ 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. Print- 
 ing, 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 govern- 
 ment, with inalienable weight in law-making, in all 
 acts of authority. It matters not what rank he has, 
 
 ^ " Assembly of counselors," the supreme parliamentary body 
 of the nation in Anglo-Saxon times. 
 2 Clergy, Nobles, and Commons. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 229 
 
 what revenues or gai-nitures : 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, unencumbered, 
 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 tilings 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 thauma- 
 turgic ^ virtue ; by which man works all things what- 
 soever. All that he does, and brings to pass, is the 
 vesture of a Thought. This London City, with all its 
 houses, palaces, steamengines, 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 thinh 
 1 Wonder- or miracle-working. 
 
230 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 of the making of that brick. — The thing we called 
 ' bits of paper with traces of black ink,' is the pvrest 
 embodiment a Thought of man can have. No wonder 
 it is, in all 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 sujierseding 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 Senti- 
 mental by and by will have to give place to the Prac- 
 tical. 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 Islnnaelites among us ! 
 Whatsoever thing, as I said above, has virtual un- 
 noticed power wiU cast-off its wrappages, bandages, and 
 step-forth one day with palpably articulated, universally 
 visible power. That one man wear the clothes, and 
 take the wages, of a function which is done by quite 
 another : there can be no profit in this ; this is not 
 right, it is wrong. And yet, alas, the viahing 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, 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 regulation, grounded the most 
 accurately on the actual facts of their position and 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 231 
 
 of the world's position, — I sliould 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 parlia- 
 mentary grants of money are by no means the chief 
 thing wanted ! To give our Men of Letters stipends, 
 endowments and all furtherance of cash, will do little 
 towards the business. On the whole, one is weary of 
 hearing about the omnipotence of money. I will say 
 rather that, for a genuine man, it is no evil to be 
 poor ; that there ought to be Literary Men poor, - — to 
 show whether they are genuine or not ! Mendicant 
 Orders, bodies of good men doomed to heg^ were in- 
 stituted in the Christian Church ; a most natural and 
 even necessary development of the spirit of Christian- 
 ity. It was itself founded on Poverty, on Sorrow, 
 Contradiction, Crucifixion, every species of worldly 
 Distress and Degradation. W^e may say, that he who 
 has not known those tilings, and learned from them 
 the priceless lessons they have to teach, has missed a 
 good opportunity of schooling. To beg, and go bare- 
 
 1 Chaos umpire sits, 
 And by decision more imbroils the fray 
 By which he reigns. 
 
 Paradise Lost, II, 907-909. 
 
232 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 foot, in coarse woollen cloak with a rope round your 
 loins, and be despised of all the woi-ld, was no beauti- 
 ful business; — nor an honourable one in any eye, till 
 the nobleness 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 need- 
 ful 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 what- 
 ever pangs, torn-out of it, cast-forth from it, as a 
 thing worthless. Byron, born rich and noble, made- 
 out even less than Burns, poor and plebeian. Who 
 knows 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 theii, as they now 
 are, a kind of ' involuntary monastic order ; ' bound 
 still to this same ugly Povert}^ , — till they had tried 
 what was in it too, tiU they had learned to make it too 
 do for them ! Money, in truth, can do much, but it 
 cannot do all. We must know the province of it, and 
 confine it there ; and even spurn it back, when it 
 wishes to get farther. 
 
 Besides, were the money-furtherances, the proper 
 season for them, the fit assigner of them, all settled, — 
 how is the Burns to be recognised that merits these? 
 He must pass through the ordeal, and prove himself. 
 This ordeal ; this wild welter of a chaos which is 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 233 
 
 called Literary Life : this too is a kind of ordeal ! 
 There is clear truth iu the idea that a strug-ole from 
 the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions 
 and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong 
 men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhei*e 
 than there. The manifold, inextricably complex, uni- 
 versal struggle of these constitutes and must con- 
 stitute, what is called the progress of society. For 
 Men of Letters, as for all other sorts of men. How to 
 regidate 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 Ganger ; your Rousseau driven into 
 mad exasperation, kindling French Revolutions by 
 his paradoxes : this, as we said, is clearly enough the 
 worst regulation. The hest, alas, is far from us ! 
 
 And yet there can be no doubt but it is coming ; 
 advancing on us, as yet hidden iu the bosom of cen- 
 turies : 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, forward- 
 ing it ; and rest not till, in some approximate degree, 
 they have accomplished that. I say, of all Priesthoods, 
 Aristocracies, Governing Classes at present extant in 
 the world, there is no class comparable for importance 
 to that Priesthood of the Writers of Books. This is a 
 
 ^ Founder of The Gentleman's Magazine (1731), to which 
 Johusou for a time contributed. 
 
234 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 fact which he who runs may read, — and draw in- 
 ferences 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 infini- 
 tesimal fraction of the great body ; they can struggle 
 on, and live or else die, as they have been wont. 
 But it deeply concerns the whole society, whether it 
 will set its light on high places, to walk thereby ; 
 or trample it under foot, and scatter it in all ways 
 of wild waste (not without conflagration), as hereto- 
 fore ! Light is the one thing wanted for the world. 
 Put wisdom in the head of the world, the world will fight 
 its battle victoriously, and be the best world man can 
 make it. I call this anomaly of a disorganic Literary 
 Class the heart of all other anomalies, at once product 
 and parent ; some good arrangement for that would 
 be as the j)unctum, salicns of a new vitality and just 
 arrangement for all. Already, in some European 
 countries, in France, in Prussia, one traces some 
 beginning of an arrangement for the Literary Class; 
 indicating the gradual possibility of such. I believe 
 that it is possible ; that it will have to be possible. 
 
 By far the most interesting fact I hear about the 
 Chinese is one on which we cannot arrive at clearness, 
 but which excites endless curiosity even in the dim 
 
 1 William Pitt, the Younger (1759-1806), several times Prime 
 Minister. 
 
 2 English poet (laureate) and prose-writer (1774-1843). 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 235 
 
 state : this namely, that tliey do attempt to make their 
 Men of Letters their Governors ! ^ It would be rash 
 to say, one understood how tliis 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, — for- 
 ward and forward : it appears to be out of these that 
 the Official Persons, and incipient Governors, are taken. 
 These are they whom they ti'y 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 try- 
 ing. — Surely there is no kind of government, consti- 
 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 constitutions and 
 
 ^ The Emperor appoints the officers of the government from 
 the Literati, who receive their degrees by competitive examina- 
 tion, and constitute the highest social class. 
 
236 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 revolutions, if they have any aim. For the man of 
 true intellect, as I assert and believe always, is the 
 noblehearted man withal, the true, just, humane and 
 valiant man. Get him for governor, aU is got ; fail 
 to get him, though you had Constitutions plentiful as 
 blackberries,^ and a Parliament in every village, there 
 is nothing yet got ! — 
 
 These things look sti-ange, 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 
 masses of mankind, in every society of our Europe, 
 are no longer capable of living at all by the things 
 which have been. When millions of men can no longer 
 by their utmost epcertion 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 Liter- 
 ary Heroes of ours was not the want of organisation 
 for Men of Letters, but a far deeper one ; out of 
 
 ^ Give you a reason on compulsion ! if reasons were as plenti- 
 ful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compul- 
 sion, I. / Hen. IV, II, iv, 264 ff. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 237 
 
 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 Let- 
 ters 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 inishing 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 iTifidelity, insincerity, spiritual paralysis. 
 Perhaps, in few centuries that one could specify since 
 tlie 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, Godhood could not now dweU ; — 
 in one word, a godless world ! 
 
 ^ In Greek mythology, the first woman on earth. To her the 
 gods gave a box containing all human blessings; but curiosity 
 led her to open the box, and all the blessings flew away except 
 hope. According to another version the box was full of miseries, 
 which Pandora let loose on the world. 
 
238 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 How mean, dwarfish are their ways of thinking, in 
 this time, — compared not with the Christian Shak- 
 speares and Miltons, but with the old Pagan Skakls, 
 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 I 
 say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion ' mo- 
 tives,' 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 God'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 of- 
 fended 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 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 239 
 
 enchanted, most tragical way, a spiritual cleath-in-life, 
 and be a Half -Hero ! 
 
 Scepticism is tlie name we give to all this ; as the 
 chief symptom, as the chief origin of all this. Concern- 
 ing 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 aU 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 miderstand that destruction of old Jornis is 
 not destruction of everlasting substances ; that Scepti- 
 cism, 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 Benthara, or 
 those who respect and believe him. Bentham himself, 
 and even the creed of Bentham, seems to me com- 
 paratively worthy of praise. It is a determinate being 
 what aU the world, in a cowardly half-and-half manner, 
 
240 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 was tending to be. Let us have the crisis ; we shall 
 either have death or the cure. 1 call this gross, steam- 
 engine Utilitarianism an approach towards new Faith. 
 It was a laying-down of cant; a saying to oneself: 
 " Well then, this world is a dead iron machine, the 
 god of it Gravitation and selfish Hunger ; let us sse 
 what, by checking and balancing, and good adjust- 
 ment 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 fear- 
 less 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 Godhood, and 
 all lip-believers of it, are bound to be Benthamites, 
 if they have courage and honesty. Benthamism is an 
 eyeless Heroism : the Human Species, like a hapless 
 blinded Samson grinding in the Philistine Mill, clasps 
 convulsively the pillars of its Mill ; brings huge ruin 
 down, but ultimately deliverance withal. Of Bentham 
 I meant to say no harm. 
 
 But this I do say, and would wish all men to know 
 and lay to heart, that, he who discerns nothing but 
 Mechanism in the Universe has in the fatalest way 
 missed the secret of the Universe altogether. That all 
 Godhood should vanish out of men's conception of this 
 Universe seems to me precisely the most brutal error, 
 — I will not disparage Heathenism by calling it a 
 Heathen error, — that men could faU into. It is not 
 true ; it is false at the very heart of it. A man who 
 thinks so will think wrong about aU things in the 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 241 
 
 world ; this original sin wiU vitiate all other conclu- 
 sions he can form. One might call it the most lament- 
 able of Delusions, — not forgetting Witchcraft itself ! 
 Witchcraft worshipped at least a living Devil ; but 
 this worships a dead iron Devil ; no God, not even a 
 Devil! — Whatsoever is noble, divine, inspired, drops 
 thereby out of life. There remains everywhere in life 
 a despicable caput-mortuum ; the mechanical hull, aU 
 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 ap- 
 plause, of cash, of whatsoever victual it may be, is the 
 ultimate fact of man's life. Atheism, in brief ; — which 
 does indeed frightfully punish itseK. The man, I say, 
 is become spiritually a paralytic man ; this godlike 
 Universe a dead mechanical steamengine, 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 ! 
 
 BeHef 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 aU 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 imderstanding about something, 
 whereon we are then to proceed to act. Doubt, truly, 
 is not itself a crime. Certainly we do not rush out, 
 
 ^ A Sicilian tyrant, sixth century, B. c. The brazen bull de- 
 vised for roasting his enemies was first tried on its inventor, 
 Perillus (not on Phalaris, as in the text). 
 
242 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 clutch-up the first thing we find, and straightway be- 
 lieve that ! All manner of doubt, inquiry, o-Kei/'is 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 affirma- 
 tions or denials ; how much more in regard to the high- 
 est things, impossible to speak-of in words at all ! That 
 a man parade his doubt, and get to imagine that de- 
 bating and logic (which means at best only the man- 
 ner 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 button 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 depart- 
 ments of the world's work ; dextrous Similitude of Act- 
 ing begins. The world's wages are pocketed, the world's 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 243 
 
 work is not done. Heroes have gone-out ; Quacks have 
 come-m. 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 amal- 
 gam for truth. Chatham,^ our brave Chatham him- 
 self, comes down to the House, all wrapt and ban- 
 daged ; 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, snatches his arm 
 from the sling, and oratorically swings and brandishes 
 it! Chatham himself lives the strangest mimetic life, 
 half -hero, half -quack, all along. For indeed the world 
 is full of dupes ; and you have to gain the loorlcVs suf- 
 frage ! How the duties of the world will be done in 
 that case, what quantities of error, which means fail- 
 ure, which means sorrow and misery, to some and to 
 many, will gradually accumulate 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 Scep- 
 tical World. An insincere world ; a godless untruth 
 of a world ! It is out of this, as I consider, that the 
 
 1 See p. 61, n. 2. 
 
 2 The elder Pitt (1708-1778), " the great Commoner." A few- 
 days before his death he delivered a fiery speech in denunciation 
 of the peace with France and the recognition of the United 
 States, and fainted as he finished. 
 
244 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 alter- 
 ing. 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 Godhood, beautiful and awful, even as in the 
 beginning of days ! One man once knowing this, many 
 men, all men, must by and by come to know it. It 
 lies there clear, for whosoever will take the spectacles 
 off his eyes and honestly look, to know ! For such a 
 man the Unbelieving Century, with its unblessed Pro- 
 ducts, 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 gi-eat- 
 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 Ben- 
 thamism, and other unheroic atheistic Insincerity is 
 visibly and even rapidly declining. An mibelieving 
 Eighteenth Century is but an exception, — such as now 
 and then occurs. I prophesy that the world will once 
 
 ' Chartism ; a radical reform movement (1838-1848) named 
 from the " People's Charter," demanding certain changes in the 
 parliamentary system. Carlyle's Essai/ on Chartism (1839) is one 
 of the best known and most vijrorous of his shorter works. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 245 
 
 ' more become sincere ; a believing world ; with many 
 Heroes in it, a heroic world ! It will then be a victori- 
 ous 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 for evermore ! It were well for 
 us to live not as fools and simulacra, but as wise and 
 realities. The world's being saved will not save us ; 
 nor the world's being lost destroy us. We should look 
 to ourselves : there is great merit here in the ' duty of 
 staying at home ' ! And, on the whole, to say truth, I 
 never heard of ' worlds ' being ' saved ' in any other 
 way. That mania of saving worlds is itself a piece of 
 the Eighteenth Century with its windy sentimentalism. 
 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 
 1 1709-1784. 
 
246 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 dawued. No intimation ; not even any French Revolu- 
 tion, — which we define to be a Truth once more, 
 though a Truth clad in hellfire ! How different was 
 the Luther's pilgrimage, with its assured goal, from 
 the Johnson's, girt with mere traditions, suppositions, 
 grown now incredible, unintelligible ! Mahomet's For- 
 mulas were of ' wood waxed and oiled,' and could be 
 hunit out of one's way : poor Johnson's were far more 
 difficult to burn. — The strong man w^ill ever find 
 tvo7'k, which means difficulty, pain, to the full measure 
 of his strength. But to make-out a victory, in those 
 circmnstances of our poor Hero as Man of Letters, was 
 perhaps more difficidt 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 Pleaven ! We need not w^onder that none of those 
 Three men rose to victory. That they fought truly is 
 the highest praise. With a mournful sjTiipathy 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. 
 
 .1 have already w^ritten of these tlu-ee Literary 
 Heroes, expressly or incidental^ ; what I suppose is 
 known to most, of you ; what need not be spoken or 
 
 ^ He employed Johnson in cataloguing a library (1742) and 
 was knocked down by Johnson for insolent behavior. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 247 
 
 written a second time. They concern us here as the 
 singular JProjjhets 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 uncon- 
 sciously, struggling, to be genuine, and plant them- 
 selves on the everlasting truth of things. This to a 
 degree that eminently distinguishes them from the poor 
 artificial mass of their contemporaries ; and 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 noble necessity was 
 laid on them to be so. They were men of such magni- 
 tude 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 
 regidar 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 IVIen. 
 As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, 
 by nature, one of our great English souls. A strong 
 and noble man ; so much left undeveloped in him to 
 the last : in a kindlier element what might he not have 
 been, — Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler ! On the whole, 
 a man must not complain of his ' 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 circumstances, John- 
 son's life could have been other than a painful one. 
 
248 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 The world might have had more of profitahle worh 
 out of him, or less ; but his effort against the world's 
 work coidd never have been a light one. Nature, 
 in return for his nobleness had said to him. Live 
 in an element of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the 
 sorrow and the nobleness were 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-half-penny 
 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 raw- 
 boned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, 
 
 ' A robe dipped in the poisoned blood of the Centaur Nessus, 
 which, causing great pain, was torn off, stripping off the flesli 
 with it. 
 
 2 Johnson was intermittently resident at Oxford for three 
 years, beginning in 1728. See the story of the shoes, under the 
 year 1729 in Boswell's Life of Johnson. 
 
SAMUEL JOHNSON 
 From the painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS , 249 
 
 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-helj) here ; a whole world 
 of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of 
 nobleness and manfuhiess 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 affection- 
 ate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than 
 he ? Great souls are always loyally submissive, rever- 
 ent 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 John- 
 son 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 sub- 
 
250 . LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 stance. 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 aU under such 
 circumstances : 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 bis speaking 
 still in some sort from the heart of Nature, though in 
 current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a Pro- 
 phet. 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 viethod, habitude ; 
 found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion them- 
 selves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading to- 
 wards 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 High- 
 est, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An 
 inventor was needed to do that, a j^oet ; he has articu- 
 
 ^ Quotation from Carlyle himself, Essay on BoswelVs Life of 
 Johnson. 
 
 2 III The Strand, London ; still one of the "sights" of the 
 city for Johnson's sake. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 251 
 
 lated 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 
 tiie 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 High- 
 way 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 for- 
 sake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, 
 Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come 
 into existence, and gone out of existence. Formidas 
 all begin by being J'ldl 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 ^vill ever be, the indispensablest furniture of 
 
 our habitation in this world. 
 
 Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his ' sin- 
 cerity.' He has no suspicion of his being particidarly 
 sincere, — of his being particularly anything ! A hard- 
 struggling, weary-hearted man, or ' scholar ' as he 
 calls himself, ti-png hard to get some honest livelihood 
 in the world, not to starve, but to live — without 
 
252 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 stealing ! A noble unconsciousness is in him. He 
 does not ' engrave Truth on his watch-seal ; ' no, but 
 he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by 
 it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man 
 whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, 
 first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature 
 which renders him incapable of ,being insincere ! 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 ; unre- 
 cognised, because never questioned or capable of ques- 
 tion. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon : all 
 the Great Men I ever heard-of have this as the pri- 
 mary material of them. Innumerable commonplace 
 men are debating, are tallying everywhere their com- 
 monplace 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 noble 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-s/ wceri7?/ 
 in both ; and see with pleasure how neither of , them 
 remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as choff sown ; 
 in both of them is something which the seed -field will 
 grow. 
 
 Johnson was a Prophet to his people ; preached a 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 253 
 
 • 
 
 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 god-forgetting Unbelief ; — you were miser- 
 able 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 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 be- 
 come obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books the indis- 
 putablest traces of a great intellect and great heart ; 
 — ever welcome, under what obstructions and perver- 
 sions soever. They are sincere words, those of his ; he 
 means things by them. A wondrous buckram style, — 
 the best he could get to then ; a measured grandilo- 
 quence, 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 
 
254 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 of it : all this you will put-up with. For the phraseo- 
 logy, tumid or not, has always sometliing within it. 
 So many beautiful styles and books, with nothimj 
 in them ; — a man is a malci^ciov 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 solid- 
 ity, honesty, insight and successful method, it may be 
 called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it a 
 kind of architectural nobleness ; it stands there like a 
 great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically 
 complete : you judge that a true Builder did it. 
 
 One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted 
 to poor Bozzy.^ He passes for a mean, inflated, glut- 
 tonous 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 attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue 
 in his mean garret there : it is a genuine reverence for 
 Excellence ; a worshij) for Heroes, at a time when 
 neither Heroes nor worship were surmised to exist. 
 Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain wor- 
 ship of them ! We will also take the liberty to deny 
 altogether that of the witty Frenchman, that no man is 
 a hero to his Talet-de-chambre.^ Or if so, it is not the 
 Hero's blame, but the Valet's : that his soul, namely, is 
 
 1 James Boswell (1740-1795); introduced to Johnson in 1763; 
 published his Life of Johnson, 1791. 
 
 - Attributed to a bewildering number of French wits, both 
 men and women. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 255 
 
 a mean vaIet-?>o\\\ ! 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 ; ^ — ad- 
 mirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a Hero 
 when he sees him ! Alas, no : it requires a kind of 
 Hero to do that ; — and one of the world's wants, in 
 this as in other senses, is for most part want of such. 
 On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's ad- 
 miration was well bestowed ; that he could have found 
 no soul in all England so worthy of bending down be- 
 fore ? Shall we not say, of this great mournfid John- 
 son too, that he guided his difficult confused existence 
 wisely ; led it ivell, 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 load- 
 star in the Eternal ; he had still a loadstar, as the brave 
 all need to have : with his eye set on that, he wotdd 
 chanoe his course for nothins: in these confused vor- 
 tices 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 Romanonim ! 
 
 1 Louis XIV (b. 1633, king 1643-1715), the most magnificent 
 of French monarchs. 
 
 2 A phrase of Falstaff's in description of Justice Shallow. // 
 Sen. 1 V, III, ii, last speech. 
 
256 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Of Rousseau ^ and his Heroism I cannot say so 
 much. He is not what I call a strong man. A morbid, 
 excitable, spasmodic man ; at best, intense rather than 
 strong. Pie had not ' the talent of Silence,' an invalu- 
 able 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 smoke till you have made it into /?re, 
 — which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is 
 capable of becoming ! Rousseau has not depth or 
 width, not calm force for difficulty ; the first character- 
 istic of true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call 
 vehemence and rigidity strength ! A man is not strong 
 who takes conviUsion-fits ; though six men cannot 
 hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest 
 weight without staggering, he is the strong man. We 
 need forever, especially in these loud-shrieking days, 
 to remind ourselves of that. A man who cannot liold 
 his peace, till the time come for speaking and acting, 
 is no right man. 
 
 Poor Rousseau's face is to me expressive of him. 
 A high but narrow contracted intensit}'^ in it : bony 
 brows ; deep, strait-set eyes, in which there is some- 
 thing bewildered-looking, — bewildered, peering with 
 lynx-eagerness. A face full of misery, even ignoble 
 misery, and also of the antagonism against that ; some- 
 thing mean, plebeian there, redeemed only by inten- 
 sity : the face of what is called a Fanatic, — a sadly 
 contracted Hero ! We name him here because, with 
 all his drawbacks, and they are many, he has the first 
 and chief characteristic of a Hero : he is heartily in 
 1 1712-1778. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 257 
 
 earnest. In earnest, if ever man was ; as none of these 
 French Philosophes were. Nay, one would say, of an 
 earnestness too great for his otherwise sensitive, rather 
 feeble nature ; and which indeed in the end drove him 
 into the strangest incoherences, ahnost delirations. 
 There had come, at last, to be a kind of madness in 
 him : his Ideas possessed him like demons ; hurried 
 him so about, drove him over steep places ! — 
 
 The fault and misery of Rousseau was what we easily 
 name by a single word, Egoism, ; which is indeed the 
 source a»d summary of all faults and miseries what- 
 soever. He had not perfected himself into victory 
 over mere Desire ; a mean Hunger, in many sorts, was 
 still the motive principle of him. I am afraid he was 
 a very vain man ; hungry for the praises of men. You 
 remember Genlis's exj^erience of him. She took Jean 
 Jacques to the Theatre ; he bargaining for a strict 
 incognito, — " He would not be seen there for the 
 world ! " The curtain did happen nevertheless to be 
 drawn aside : the Pit recognised Jean Jacques, but 
 took no great notice of him ! He expressed the bit- 
 terest indignation ; gloomed all evening, spake no 
 other than surly words. The glib Countess remained 
 entirely convinced that his anger was not at being seen, 
 but at not being applauded when seen. How the whole 
 nature of the man is poisoned ; nothing but suspicion, 
 self-isolation, fierce moody ways ! He could not live 
 with anybody. A man of some rank from the country, 
 who visited him often, and used to sit with him, ex- 
 pressing all reverence and affection for him, comes one 
 day; finds Jean Jacques fidl of the sourest unintel- 
 ligible humour. " Monsieur," said Jean Jacques, with 
 
258 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 flaming eyes, " I know why you come here. You come 
 to see what a poor life I lead ; how little is in my poor 
 pot that is boiling there. Well, look into the pot ! 
 There is half a poimd of meat, one carrot and three 
 onions ; that is all : go and tell the whole world that, 
 if you like, Monsiem* ! " — A man of this sort was far 
 gone. The whole world got itself supplied Avith anec- 
 dotes, for light laughter, for a certain theatrical in- 
 terest, from these perversions and contortions of poor 
 Jean Jacques. Alas, to him they were not laughing 
 or theatrical ; too real to him ! The contortions of a 
 dying gladiator: the crowded amphitheatre looks-on 
 with entertainment ; but the gladiator is in agonies 
 and dying. 
 
 And yet this Rousseau, as we say, with his passion- 
 ate appeals to Mothers, with his Contrat-social} with 
 his celebrations of Nature, even of savage life in 
 Nature, did once more touch upon Reality, struggle 
 towards Reality ; was doing the function of a Prophet 
 to his Time. As he could, and as the Time could ! 
 Strangely through all that defacement, degradation 
 and almost madness, there is in the inmost heart of 
 poor Rousseau a spark of real heavenly fire. Once 
 more, out of the element of that withered mocking 
 Philosophism, Scepticism and Persiflage, there has 
 arisen in this man the ineradicable feeling and know- 
 ledge that this Life of ours is true ; not a Scepticism, 
 Theorem, or Persiflage, but a Fact, an awful Reality. 
 
 ^ A treatise on government, advocating the direct sovereignty 
 of the people as the only natural and ideal government. The 
 drafters of the American Declaration of Independence were 
 largely and directly indebted to Rousseau. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 259 
 
 Nature had made that revelation to him ; had ordered 
 him to speak it out. He got it spoken out ; if not well 
 and clearly, then ill and dimly, — as clearly as he 
 could. Nay what are all errors and perversities of his, 
 even those stealings of ribbons,^ aimless confused mis- 
 eries and vagabondisms, if we will interpret them 
 kindly, but the blinkard dazzlement and staggerings to 
 and fro of a man sent on an errand he is too weak for, 
 by a path he cannot yet find ? Men are led by strange 
 ways. One should have tolerance for a man, hope of 
 him ; leave him to try yet what he will do. While life 
 lasts, hope lasts for every man. 
 
 Of Rousseau's literary talents, greatly celebrated 
 stiU among his countrymen, I do not say much. His 
 Books,2 like himself, are what I call unhealthy ; not 
 the good sort of Books. There is a sensuality in Rous- 
 seau. Combined with such an intellectual gift as his, 
 it makes pictures of a certain gorgeous attractiveness : 
 but they are not genuinely poetical. Not white sun- 
 light : something operatic ; a kind of rosepink, arti- 
 ficial bedizenment. It is frequent, or rather it is uni- 
 versal, among the French since his tune. Madame de 
 Stael ^ has something of it ; St. Pierre ; * and down 
 
 ^ At the death of Mme. de Vercellis, in whose household he 
 was au attendant, Rousseau, provoked thereto by his chagrin 
 at not being mentioned in her will, stole a piece of ribbon of 
 slight value. On being found in possession of it he declared 
 that a young girl of the household had given it to him. His 
 remorse at having brought baseless suspicion on her fills the 
 closing paragraphs of his Confessions, I. 
 
 ^ His most famous book, Confessions, appeared in 1782, after 
 his death. 
 
 3 1766-1817. 
 
 * 1737-1814 ; author of Paul and Virginia. 
 
260 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 onwards to the present astonishing convulsionary ' Lit- 
 erature of Desperation,' it is everywhere abundant. 
 That same rosepink is not the right hue. Look at a 
 Shakspeare, at a Goethe, even at a Walter Scott ! He 
 who has once seen into this, has seen the difference of 
 the True from the Sham-True, and will discriminate 
 them ever afterwards. 
 
 We had to observe in Johnson how much good a 
 Prophet, under all disadvantages and disorganisations, 
 can accomplish for the world. Li Rousseau we are 
 called to look rather at the fearful amount of evil 
 which, under such disorganisation, may accompany the 
 good. Historically it is a most pregnant spectacle, 
 that of Rousseau. Banished into Paris garrets, in the 
 gloomy company of his own Thoughts and Necessities 
 there ; driven from post to pillar ; ^ fretted, exasj)er- 
 ated till the heart of him went mad, he had grown to 
 feel deeply that the world was not his friend nor the 
 world's law. 2 It was expedient, if anyway possible, 
 that such a man should not have been set in flat hos- 
 tility with the world. He could be cooped into garrets, 
 laughed at as a maniac, left to starve, like a wild-beast 
 
 ^ The storm of protest provoked by Emile (1762) caused him 
 to leave Paris. He was driven in turn from various towns in 
 Switzerland and France. For a while he was living in England, 
 then wandering about France, and finally back to Paris again. 
 2 Famine is in thy cheeks, 
 Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, 
 Contempt and beggary bangs upon thy back ; 
 The world is not thy friend nor the world's law. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, V, i, 69-72. 
 It was an unsuccessful attempt to get justice against an influen- 
 tial aristocrat that first stirred Rousseau against the order of 
 tliiusrs in France. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 261 
 
 in his cage ; — but he could not be hindered from set- 
 ting the world on fire. The French Revolution found 
 its Evangelist in Rousseau. His semi-delirious^ specu- 
 lations on the misei"ies of civilised life, the prefer- 
 ability of the savage to the civilised, and suchlike, 
 helped well to produce a whole delirium in France 
 generally. True, you may well ask. What could the 
 world, the governors of the world do with such a 
 man ? Difficult to say what the governors of the world 
 could do with him ! What he could do with them is 
 unhappily clear enough, — guillotine a great many 
 of them ! Enough now of Rousseau. 
 
 It was a curious phenomenon, in the withered, un- 
 believing, secondhand Eighteenth Century, that of a 
 Hero starting up, among the artificial pasteboard fig- 
 ures and productions, in the guise of a Robert Burns. 
 Like a little well in the rocky desert places, — like a 
 sudden splendour of Heaven in the artificial Vauxhall ! 
 People knew not what to make of it. They took it 
 for a piece of the Vauxhall fire-work ; alas, it let 
 itself be so taken, though struggling half -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. 
 
 The tragedy of Burns's life is known to all of you. 
 Surely we may say, if discrepancy between place held 
 and place merited constitute perverseness of lot for 
 a man, no lot could be more perverse than Burns's. 
 Among those secondhand acting-figures, mimes for 
 ^ Literally so. 
 
262 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 most part, of the Eighteenth Century, once more a 
 giant Original Man ; one of those men who reach down 
 to the perennial Deeps, who take rank with the Heroic 
 among men : and he was born ^ in a poor Ayrshire 
 hut. The largest soul of all tlie British lands came 
 among us in the shape of a hard-handed Scottish 
 Peasant. 
 
 His Father, a poor toiling man, tried various things ; 
 did not succeed in any ; was involved in continual 
 difficulties. The Steward, Factor as the Scotch call 
 him, used to send letters and threaten ings. Burns says, 
 ' which tlu-ew us all into tears.' The brave, hard- 
 toiling, hard-suffering Father, his brave heroine of a 
 wife ; and those children, of whom Robert was one ! 
 In this Earth, so ^vide otherwise, no shelter for them. 
 The letters ' threw us aU into tears : ' figure it. The 
 brave Father, I say always ; — a silent Hero and Poet; 
 without whom the son had never been a speaking one ! 
 Burns's Schoolmaster came afterwards to London, 
 learnt what good society was ; but declares that in no 
 meeting of men did he ever enjoy better discourse than 
 at the hearth of this peasant. And his poor ' seven 
 acres of nursery-ground,' — not that, nor the miserable 
 patch of clay-farm, nor anything he tried to get a 
 living by, would prosper with him ; he had a sore un- 
 equal battle all his days. But he stood to it valiantly ; 
 a wise, faithful, unconquerable man ; — swalloAving 
 down how many sore sufferings daily into silence ; 
 fighting like an unseen Hero, — nobody publishing 
 newspaper paragraphs about his nobleness ; voting 
 pieces of plate to him ! However, he was not lost : 
 1 1759. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 263 
 
 nothing is lost. Robert is there ; the outcome of him, 
 — and indeed of many generations of such as him. 
 
 This Burns appeared under every disadvantage : 
 uninstructed, poor, born only to hard manual toil ; and 
 writing, when it came to that, in a rustic special dia- 
 lect, known only to a smay province of the country he 
 lived in. Had he written, even what he did Avrite, in 
 the general language of England, I doubt not he had 
 already become universally recognised as being, or 
 capable to be, one of our greatest men. That he should 
 have tempted so many to penetrate through the 
 rough husk of that dialect of his, is proof that there 
 lay something far from common within it. He has 
 gained a certain recognition, and is continuing to do 
 so over all quarters of our wade Saxon world : where- 
 soever a Saxon dialect is spoken, it begins to be 
 understood, by personal inspection of this and the 
 other, that one of the most considerable Saxon men 
 of the Eighteenth century was an Ayrshire Peasant 
 named Robert Burns. Yes, I will say, here too was 
 a piece of the right Saxon stuff : strong as the Harz- 
 rock, rooted in the depths of the world ; — rock, yet 
 with weUs 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, honest ; 
 true simplicity of strength; with its lightning-fire, 
 with its soft dewy pity ; — like the old Norse Thor, 
 the Peasant-god ! — 
 
 Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and 
 worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in 
 spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of 
 
264 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 speech ; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and 
 heart ; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting 
 peats in the bog, or suchlike, than he ever afterwards 
 knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth 
 Qfond (jaillard^ as old Marquis Mirabeau calls it), 
 a primal-element of sunshine and joyfuluess, coupled 
 with his other deep and earnest quahties, is one of 
 the most attractive chai-acteristics of Burns. A large 
 fund of Hope dwells in him ; spite of his tragical his- 
 tory, 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-bounding horse, that laughs at the shaking 
 of the spear, — But indeed, Hope, Mirth, of the sort 
 like Burns's, are they not the outcome properly of 
 warm generous affection, — such as is the beginning of 
 all to every man ? 
 
 You would think it strange if I called Burns the 
 most gifted British soul we had in all that century of 
 his : and yet I believe the day is coming when there 
 will be little danger in saying so. His writings, all 
 that he did under such obstructions,' are only a poor 
 fragment of him. Professor Stewart ^ remarked very 
 justly, what indeed is true of all Poets good for much, 
 that his poetry was not any partictdar faculty ; but 
 the general result of a naturally vigorous original mind 
 expressing itself in that way. Burns's gifts, expressed 
 
 1 Cupid 
 Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold, 
 And, like a dew-drop from the lion's mane, 
 Be shook to air. Troilus and Cressida, III, iii, 222-225. 
 
 ^ Of Edinburgh University. He entertained the poet in his 
 house, and is speaking here from personal acquaintance. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 265 
 
 in conversation, are the theme of all that ever heard 
 him. All kinds of gifts : from the gracef iilest utter- 
 ances of courtesy, to the highest fire of passionate 
 speech ; loud floods of mirth, soft wailings of affection, 
 laconic emphasis, clear piercing insight ; all was m 
 him. Witty duchesses celebrate him as a man whose 
 speech ' led them off their feet.' This is beautiful : 
 but still more beautiful that which Mr. Lockhart ^ has 
 recorded, which I have more than once alluded to, 
 How the waiters and ostlers at inns would get out of 
 bed, and come crowding to hear this man speak ! 
 Waiters and ostlers : — they too were men, and here 
 was a man ! I have heard much about his speech ; 
 but one of the best things I ever heard of it was, last 
 year, from a venerable gentleman long familiar with 
 him. That it was speech distinguished by always 
 having something in it. " He spoke rather little than 
 much," this old man told me ; " sat rather silent in 
 those early days, as in the company of persons above 
 him ; and always when he did speak, it was to throw 
 new light on the matter." I know not why any one 
 should ever speak otherwise ! — But if we look at his 
 general force of soul, his healthy robustness everyway, 
 the rugged downrightness, jsenetration, generous val- 
 our and manf ulness that was in him, — where shall 
 we readily find a better-gifted man ? 
 
 Among the great men of the Eighteenth Century, 
 I sometimes feel as if Burns might be found to resem- 
 ble Mirabeau more than any other. They differ widely 
 in vesture ; yet look at them intrinsically. There is 
 
 ^ Son-in-law of Scott, biographer of Scott and Burns (1794- 
 1854). 
 
2G6 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 the same burly thick-necked strength of body as of 
 soul ; — built, in both cases, on what the old Marquis 
 calls ?ifond f/alllard. By nature, by course of breed- 
 ing, 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 insight, superiority of vision. The thing 
 that he says is worth remembering. It is a flash of 
 insight into some object or other : so do both these 
 men speak. The same raging passions ; capable too in 
 both of manifesting themselves as the tenderest noble 
 affections. Wit, wild laughter, energy, directness, sin- 
 cerity : these were in both. 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 Solway Frith ; 
 in keeping silence over so much, where no good speech, 
 but only inarticulate rage was possible : this might 
 have bellowed forth Ushers de Breze ^ and the like ; 
 and made itself visible to all men, in managing of 
 kingdoms, in ruling of great ever-memorable epochs ! 
 But they said to him reprovingly, his Official Superi- 
 ors said, and wrote : ' You are to work, not think.' 
 Of your thinking-isLCultj, the greatest in this land, 
 we have no need ; you are to gauge beer 2 there ; for 
 that only are you wanted. Very notable ; — and worth 
 mentioning, though we know what is to be said and 
 answered ! As if Thought, Power of Thinking, were 
 
 ^ See Carlyle's French Revolution, I, v, ii. 
 2 Beginning 1788, at a salary of £70. Au incautious expression 
 of his political sentiments almost cost him his appointment. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 267 
 
 not, at all times, in all places and situations of the 
 world, precisely the thing- that was wanted. The fatal 
 man, is he not always the Mwthiuking man, the man 
 who cannot think and see ; but only grope, and hal- 
 lucinate, and missee the nature of the thing he works 
 with ? He missees it, mistakes it as we say ; takes it 
 for one thing, and it is another thing, — and leaves 
 him standing like a Futility there ! He is the fatal 
 man ; unutterably fatal, put in the high places of men. 
 
 — " Why complain of this ? " say some : " Strength 
 is mournfully denied its arena ; that w^as true from of 
 old." Doubtless ; and the worse for the arena, answer 
 I ! Complaining profits little ; stating of the truth 
 may profit. That a Europe, with its French Revolu- 
 tion just breaking out, finds no need of a Burns ex- 
 cept for gauging beer, — is a thing I, for one, cannot 
 rejoice at ! — 
 
 Once more we have to say here, that the cliief 
 quality of Burns is the sincerity of him. So in his 
 Poetry, so in his Life. The Song he sings is not of 
 fantasticalities ; it is of a thing felt, really there ; t]ie 
 prime merit of this, as of aU in him, and of his Life 
 generally, is truth. The Life of Burns is what we may 
 call a great tragic sincerity. A sort of savage sincerity, 
 
 — not cruel, far from that : but wild, wrestling naked 
 with the truth of things. In that sense, there is some- 
 thing of the savage in all great men. 
 
 Hero-worship, — Odin, Burns ? Well ; these Men of 
 Letters too were not without a kind of Hero-worship : 
 but what a strange condition has that got into now ! 
 The waiters and ostlers of Scotch inns, prying about 
 the door, eager to catch any word that fell from Burns, 
 
268 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 were doing unconscious reverence to the Heroic. 
 Johnson had his Boswell for worshipper. Rousseau 
 had worshippers enough ; princes calling on him in 
 his mean garret ; the great, the beautiful doing rever- 
 ence 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 o^^^l living. 
 He cannot even get his music copied: "By 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 vital wellbeing or illbeing to a 
 generation, can we say that these generations are very 
 first-rate ? — And yet our heroic Men of Letters do 
 teach, govern, are kings, priests, or what you like to 
 call them ; intrinsically there is no preventing it by 
 any means whatever. The world has to obey him who 
 thinks and sees in the world. The world can alter the 
 manner of that ; can either have it as blessed continu- 
 ous summer sunshine, or as unblessed black thunder 
 and tornado, — with unspeakable difference of profit 
 for the world ! The manner of it is very alterable ; the 
 matter and fact of it 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 name or 
 welcome we give him or it, is a point that concerns 
 ourselves mainly. It, the new Truth, new deeper 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 269 
 
 revealing of the Secret of this Universe, is verily of 
 the nature of a message from on high ; and must and 
 will have itseK obeyed. — 
 
 My last remark is on that notablest phasis of Burns's 
 history, — his visit to Edinburgh. Often it seems to 
 me as if his demeanour there were the highest proof 
 he gave of what a fund of worth and genuine manhood 
 was in him. If we think of it, few heavier burdens 
 could be laid on the strength of a man. So sudden ; all 
 common Lionism, which ruins innmnerable men, was 
 as nothing to this. It is as if Napoleon had been made 
 a King of, not gradually, but at once from the Artil- 
 lery Lieutenancy in the Regiment La Fere.^ Burns, 
 still only in his twenty-seventh year, is no longer even 
 a ploughman ; he is flying to the West Indies to es- 
 cape disgrace and a jail. This month he is a ruined 
 peasant, his wages seven pounds a yeai*, and these gone 
 from him : next month he is in the blaze of rank and 
 beauty, handing down jewelled Duchesses to dinner ;2 
 the cynosure ^ of aU eyes ! Adversity is sometimes hard 
 upon a man ; but for one man who can stand pros- 
 
 1 See p. 334, n. 1. 
 
 2 In July, 1786, he published a volume of poems to raise money 
 for his passage to Jamaica, where he intended to turn slave-driver. 
 The volume won him the instant and enthusiastic recognition of 
 tlie intellectual and social aristocracy of Edinburgh, whither he 
 went in November. A new edition of his poems brought him 
 about £500. 
 
 ^ " Dog's Tail," the name of the constellation containing the 
 polar star ; hence any object of conspicuous attention. 
 
 Where perhaps some Beauty lies, 
 The Cynosure of neighbouring eyes. 
 
 U Allegro, 79, 80. 
 
270 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 perity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. 
 I admire much the way in which Burns met all this. 
 Perhaps no man one could point out, was ever so sorely 
 tried, and so little forgot himself. Tranquil, unaston- 
 ished ; not abashed, not inflated, neither awkwardness 
 nor affectation : he feels that he there is the man Rob- 
 ert Burns ; that the ' rank is but the guinea-stamp ; ' ^ 
 that the celebrity is but the candle-light, which will 
 show what man, not in the least make him a better 
 or other man ! Alas, it may readily, unless he look to 
 it, make him a loorse man ; a wretched inflated wind- 
 bag, — inflated till he hurst^ and become a dead lion ; 
 for whom, as some one has said, ' there is no resur- 
 rection of the body;' worse than a living dog! — 
 Burns is admirable here. 
 
 And yet, alas, as I have observed elsewhere, these 
 Lion-hunters were the ruin and death of Burns. It 
 was they that i*endered it impossible for him to live ! 
 They gathered 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. He falls into discontents, into mis- 
 eries, faults ; the world getting ever more desolate for 
 him ; health, character, peace of mind, all gone ; — sol- 
 itary enough now. It is tragical to think of ! These 
 men came but to see him ; it was out of no sympathy 
 with him, nor no hatred to him. They came to get a 
 little amusement : they got their amusement ; — and 
 the Hero's life went for it ! 
 
 ^ The rank is but the guinea's stamp, 
 The man 's the gowd for a' that. 
 
 Burus's For a' That and a' That. 
 
THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS 271 
 
 Eichter says, in the Island of Sumatra there is a 
 kind o£ ' Light-chafers,' large Fire-flies, which people 
 stick uj)on spits, and illuminate the ways with at night. 
 Persons of condition can thus travel with a pleasant 
 radiance, which they much admire. Great honour to 
 the Fire-flies ! But — ! — 
 
LECTURE VI 
 
 THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON : 
 MODERN REVOLUTIONISM 
 
 [Friday, 22d May 1840.] 
 
 We come now to the last form of Heroism ; that which 
 we call Kingship. The Commander over Men ; he to 
 whose will our wiUs are to be subordinated, and I03 ally 
 surrender themselves, and find their welfare iu doing 
 so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Mefn. 
 He is practically the summary for us of all the various 
 figures of Heroism ; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of 
 eartlily 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 are to do. He is 
 called Rex., Regulator, Roi : our own name is still 
 better ; King, Koiniing., which means Canning, Able- 
 man. 
 
 Numerous considerations, pointing towards deep, 
 questionable, and indeed unfathomable regions, pre- 
 sent themselves here : on the most of which we must 
 resolutely for the present forbear to speak at all. As 
 Burke said that perhaps fair Trial hy J\iry was the 
 soul of Government, and that all legislation, adminis- 
 tration, parliamentary debating, and the rest of it, 
 went on, in ' order to bring twelve impartial men into 
 a jury-box ; ' — so, by much stronger reason, may I say 
 
THE HERO AS KING 273 
 
 here, that the finding of your Ahleman and getting 
 him invested with the symbols of ability, with dignity, 
 worship (tuo/'^/ioship), royalty, kinghood, or whatever 
 we call it, so that he may actually have room to guide 
 according to his faculty of doing it, — is the business, 
 well or ill accomplished, of all social procedure what- 
 soever in this world ! Hustings-speeches,^ Parliament- 
 ary motions. Reform Bills, ^ French Revolutions, all 
 mean at heart this ; or else nothing. Find in any 
 country the Ablest Man that exists there ; raise him 
 to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him : you 
 have a perfect government for that country ; no ballot- 
 box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution- 
 building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve 
 it a whit. It is in the perfect state ; an ideal country. 
 The Ablest Man ; he means also the truest-hearted, 
 justest, the Noblest Man : what he tells us to do must 
 be precisely the wisest, fittest, that we could anywhere 
 or anyhow learn ; — the thing which it will in all ways 
 behove us, with right loyal thanlrfulness, and nothing 
 doubting, to do ! Our doing and life were then, so 
 far as government could regulate it, well regulated ; 
 that were the ideal of constitutions. 
 
 Alas, we know very well that Ideals can never be 
 completely embodied in practice. Ideals must ever lie 
 a very great way off ; and we will right thankfully 
 content ourselves with any not intolerable approxima- 
 tion thereto ! Let no man, as SchiUer ^ says, too quer- 
 
 1 See p. 145, n. 3. 
 
 '^ Most notably that of 1832 for the correction of abuses in 
 the parliamentary system. 
 
 ^ 1759-1805 ; German poet and dramatist, friend of Goethe. 
 
274 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 ulously ' measure by a scale of perfection the meagre 
 product of reality ' in this poor world of ours. We 
 will esteem him no wise man ; we wtil esteem him a 
 sickly, discontented, foohsh man. And yet, on the 
 other hand, it is never to be forgotten that Ideals do 
 exist ; that if they be not approximated to at all, the 
 whole matter goes to wreck! Infallibly. No brick- 
 layer builds a wall perfectly perpendicular, matheniat- 
 ically this is not possible ; a certain degree of perpen- 
 dicularity suffices him ; and he, like a good bricklayer, 
 who must have done with his job, leaves it so. And 
 yet if he sway too much from the perpendicular; 
 above all, if he throw plummet and level quite away 
 from him, and pile brick on brick heedless, just as it 
 comes to hand — I Such bricklayer, I think, is in a 
 b,ad way. Tie 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 ruin ! — 
 
 This is the history of all rebellions, Fi-ench Revolu- 
 tions, social explosions in ancient or modern times. 
 You have put the too 6^;iable Man at the head of af- 
 fairs ! The too ignoble, unvaliant, fatuous man. You 
 have forgotten that there is any rule, or natural neces- 
 sity whatever, of putting the Able Man there. Brick 
 must lie on brick as it may and can. Unable Simu- 
 lacrum of Ability, quack, in a word, must adjust him- 
 self with quack, in all manner of administration of 
 human things; — which accordingly lie unadministered, 
 fermenting into unmeasured masses of failure, of in- 
 digent misery : in the outward, and in the inward or 
 spii-itual, miserable millions stretch-out the hand for 
 their due supply, and it is not there. The 'law of 
 
THE HERO AS KING 275 
 
 gravitation ' acts ; Nature's laws do none of them 
 forget to act. The miserable millions burst-forth into 
 Sansculottism/ or some other sprt of madness : 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 un- 
 read now in the Public Libraries of this countiy. Far 
 be it from us to disturb the calm process by which it 
 is disappearing harmlessly from the earth, in those re- 
 positories ! At the same time, not to let the immense 
 rubbish go without leaving us, as it ought, some soul 
 of it behind — I will say that it did mean something ; 
 something true, which it is important for us and all 
 men to keep in mind. To assert that in whatever man 
 you chose to lay hold of (by this or the other plan of 
 clutching at him) ; and clapt a round piece of metal 
 on the head of, and called King, — there straightway 
 came to reside a di\ane virtue, so that he 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 Libraries ? But I will say withal, and that is 
 what these Divine-right men meant, That in Kings, 
 and in all human Authorities, and relations that men 
 god-created can form among each other, there is verily 
 
 ^ The "ism" of those "without breeches," i. e. the Parisian 
 mob in the time of the French Revobition. Culottes were the 
 knee breeches of court dress. " It is in these places, in these 
 months, that the epithet Sansculotte first gets applied to indigent 
 Patriotism; . . . Destitute-of-Breeches : a mournful Destitu- 
 tion ; which however, if Twenty millions share it, may become 
 more effective than most Possessions ! " Carlyle's French Rev- 
 olution, II, III, iv. 
 
276 LECTURES ON HEROES ' 
 
 either a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong ; one 
 or the other of these two ! For it is false altogether, 
 what the last Sceptical Century taught us, that this 
 world is a steamengine. There is a God in this world ; 
 and a God's-sanction, or else the violation of such, 
 does look-out from all ruling and obedience, from aU 
 moral acts of men. There is no act more moral be- 
 tween men than that of rule and obedience. Woe to 
 him that claims obedience when it is not due; \yoe to 
 him that refuses it when it is ! God's law is in that, I 
 say, however the Parchment-laws may run : there is a 
 Divine Right ^ or else a Diabolic Wrong at the heart 
 of every claim that one man makes upon another. 
 
 It can do none of us harm to reflect on this : in all 
 the relations of life it will concern us ; in Loyalty and 
 Royalty, the highest of these. I esteem the modern 
 error. That all goes- by self-interest and the checking 
 and balancing of greedy knaveries, and that, in short, 
 there is nothing divine whatever in the association of 
 men, a still more despicable error, natural as it is to an 
 unbelieving century, than that of a ' divine right ' in 
 people called Kings. I say. Find me the true /i7j«- 
 ning. King or Able-man, and he has a divine right over 
 me. That we knew in some tolerable measure how to 
 fmd him, and that all men were ready to acknowledge 
 his divine right when found : this is precisely the heal- 
 ing which a sick world is everywhere, in these ages, 
 seeking after I The true King, as guide of the practi- 
 cal, has ever something of the Pontiff in him, — guide 
 of the spiritual, from which all practice has its rise. 
 This too is a true saying, That the J\lng is head of the 
 ^ Compare p. 2 : "the divine relation," etc. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 277 
 
 Church. — But we will leave the Polemic stuff of a 
 dead century to lie quiet on its bookshelves. 
 
 Certainly it is a fearful business, that of having your 
 Able-man to seeh^ and not knowing in what manner to 
 proceed 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 plummet or the law of gravita- 
 tion, have toppled, tumbled, and it all welters as we 
 see! But the beo-innino- of it was not the French 
 Kevolution ; that is rather the end, we can hope. It 
 were truer to say, the begiiining was three centuries 
 further back: in the Reformation of Luther.^ That 
 the thing which still called itself Christian Church had 
 become a Falsehood, and brazenly went about pretend- 
 ing to pardon men's sins for metallic coined money, 
 and to do much else which in the everlasting truth of 
 Nature it did not now do : here lay the vital malady. 
 The inward being wrong, all outward went ever more 
 and more wrong. Belief died away; all was Doubt, 
 Disbelief. The builder cast aioay his plummet ; said 
 to himself, " What is gravitation ? Brick lies on brick 
 there ! " Alas, does it not still sound strange to many 
 of us, the assertion that there is a God's-truth in the 
 business of god-created men ; that aU is not a kind of 
 grimace, an ' expediency,' diplomacy, one knows not 
 what I — 
 
 From that first necessary assertion of Luther's, 
 " You, self-styled Papa^ you are no Father in God at 
 
 ^ Compare p. 173, end. 
 
 2 The original form and meaning of " pope." 
 
278 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 all; you are — a Chimera,^ whom I know not how to 
 name in polite language I " — from that onwards to the 
 shout ^ which rose round Camille Desnioidins in the 
 Palais-Royal, " Aux amies ! " when the people had 
 burst-up against all manner of Chimeras, — I find a 
 natural historical sequence. That shout too, so fright- 
 ful, half-infernal, was a great matter. Once more the 
 voice of awakened nations ; — starting confusedly, as 
 out of nightmare, as out of death-sleep, into 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 ! HoUowness, insincerity has to 
 cease ; sincerity of some sort has to begin. Cost what 
 it may, reigns of terror, horrors of French Revolu- 
 tion 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 England and elsewhere used to be, that the 
 French Nation had, in those days, as it were gone 
 mad ; that the French Revolution was a general act 
 of insanity, a temporary conversion of France and 
 larsfe 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 
 
 1 See p. 18, n. 1. 
 
 ^ " To arms ! " from the crowd in tlie garden of the Palais 
 Royal, addressed from a caf^ table by Desmoulins, a journalist, 
 July 12, 1789. The French Revolution began then : the Bastille 
 fell two days later. (See French Revolution, I, v, iv.) 
 
 ^ A corrupted pronunciation of " Bethlehem," — the Hospital 
 (for lunatics) of St. Mary of Bethlehem, Loudon, founded 124G. 
 
 
THE HERO AS KING 279 
 
 Dreams and the Picturesque ! — To such comfortable 
 philosojjhers, the Three Days of July 1830 ^ must have 
 been a surprising phenomenon. Here is the French 
 Nation risen again, in musketry and death-struggle, 
 out shooting and being shot, to make that same mad 
 French Revolution good ! The sons and grandsons of 
 those men, it would seem, persist in the enterprise : 
 they do not disown it ; they will have it made good ; 
 will have themselves shot, if it be not made good ! 
 To philosophers who had made-up their life-system 
 on that ' madness ' quietus, no phenomenon could be 
 more alarming. Poor Niebuhr,^ they say, the Prussian 
 Professor and Historian, fell broken-hearted in conse- 
 quence ; sickened, if we can believe it, and died of the 
 Three Days ! It was surely not a very heroic death ; 
 — little better than Racine's,^ dying because Louis 
 Fourteenth looked sternly on him once. The world 
 had stood some considerable shocks, in its time ; might 
 have been expected to survive the Three Days too, 
 and be found turning on its axis after even them ! 
 The Three Days told all mortals that the old French 
 Revolution, mad as it might look, was not a transitory 
 ebullition of Bedlam, but a genuine product of this 
 Earth where we all live ; that it was verily a Fact, 
 and that the world in general would do well every- 
 where to regard it as such. 
 
 Truly, without the French Revolution, one would 
 
 ^ Overthrowing Charles X and his arbitrary and incapable 
 government : Louis Philippe became " the Citizen King " by the 
 will of the people. 
 
 2 1776-1831. 
 
 3 One of the greatest French tragic poets (1G39-1699); called 
 Louis XIV's " toy." 
 
280 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 not know what to make of an age like this at all. We 
 will hail the French Kevolution, as shipwrecked mari- 
 ners might the sternest rock, in a world otherwise all 
 of baseless sea and waves. A true Apocalypse, though 
 a terrible one, to this false withered artificial time ; 
 testifying once more that Nature is ^^r^^^^rnatural ; if 
 not divine, then diabolic ; that Semblance is not Real- 
 ity ; that it has to become Reality, or the world will 
 take-fire under it, — burn it into what it is, namely 
 Nothing ! Plausibility has ended ; empty Routine has 
 ended; much has ended. This, as with a Trmnp of 
 Doom, has been proclaimed to all men. They are the 
 wisest who will learn it soonest. Long confused gen- 
 erations before it be learned ; peace impossible till it 
 be ! The earnest man, surrounded, as ever, with a 
 world of inconsistencies, can await patiently, patiently 
 strive to do his work, in the 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 lie there, and how fast, fear- 
 fully 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 ! 
 
 To me, in these circumstances, that of ' Hero-worship ' 
 becomes a fact inexpressibly precious ; the most sola- 
 cing fact one sees in the world at present. There is an 
 everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. 
 Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies tliat 
 men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 281 
 
 The certainty of Heroes being sent ns ; our faculty, 
 our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent : it shines 
 like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and 
 all manner of down-rushing and conflagration. 
 
 Hero-worship would have sounded very strange to 
 those workers and fighters in the French Revolution. 
 Not reverence for Great Men; not any hope or 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 anj'- 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 gTeat men 
 being impossible, a level immensity of foolish small 
 men would suffice. It was a natural faith then and 
 there. " Liberty and Equality ; no Authority needed 
 any longer. Hero-worship, reverence for siich Au- 
 thorities, has proved false, is itself a falsehood ; no 
 more of it! We have had such Jbrgeries, we will now 
 trust nothing. So many base plated coins passing in 
 the market, the belief has now become common that no 
 gold any longer exists, — and even that we can do 
 very well without gold ! " I find this, among other 
 things, that universal cry of Liberty and Equality; 
 and find in it very natural, as matters then stood. 
 
 And yet surely it is but the transition from false 
 to true. Considered as the whole truth, it is false alto- 
 gether ; — the product of entire sceptical blindness, as 
 yet only struggling to see. Hero-worship exists for- 
 ever, and everywhere : not Loyalty alone ; it extends 
 from divine adoration down to the lowest practical re- 
 
282 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 gions of life. ' Bending before men,' if it is not to be 
 a mere empty grimace, better dispensed with than 
 practised, is Hero-worship, — a recognition that there 
 does dwell in that presence of our brother something 
 divine; that every created man, as Novalis said, is a 
 ' revelation in the Flesh.' They were Poets too, that 
 devised all those graceful courtesies which make life 
 noble I Courtesy is not a falsehood or grimace ; it need 
 not be such. And Loyalty, religious Worship itself, 
 are still possible ; nay still inevitable. 
 
 May we not say, moreover, while so many of our 
 late Heroes have worked rather as revolutionary men, 
 that nevertheless every Great Man, every genuine man, 
 is by the nature of him a son of Order, not of Disorder? 
 It is a tragical position for a true man to work in revo- 
 IjLitions. He seems an anarchist ; and indeed a pain- 
 ful element of anarchy does encumber him at every 
 step, — him to whose whole soul anarchy is hostile, 
 hateful. His mission is Order ; every man's is. He is 
 here to make what was disorderly, chaotic, into a thing 
 ruled, regular. He is the missionary of Order. Is not 
 all work of man in this world a making of Order? 
 The carpenter fmds rough trees ; shapes them, con- 
 strains them into square fitness, into purpose and use. 
 AVe are all born enemies of Disorder : it is tragical 
 for us all to be concerned in image-breaking and down- 
 pulling; for the Great Man, more a man than we, it is 
 doubly tragical. 
 
 Thus too all human things, maddest French Sans- 
 culottisms, do and must work towards Order. I say, 
 there is not a man in them, raging in the thickest of 
 the madness, but is impelled withal, at all moments, 
 
THE HERO AS KING 283 
 
 towards Order. His very life means that ; Disorder is 
 dissolution, death. No chaos but it 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 nevei-theless, and assert itself practically, in a way 
 which all have to credit. Divine right, take it on the 
 great scale, is found to mean divine might withal ! 
 While old false Formulas are getting trampled every- 
 where into destruction, new genuine Substances unex- 
 pectedly unfold themselves indestructible. In rebel- 
 lious ages, when Kingship itself seems dead and 
 abolished, Cromwell, Napoleon step-forth again as 
 Kings. The history of these men is what we have now 
 to look at, as our last phasis of Heroism. The old 
 asres are broug'ht back to us ; the manner in which 
 Kings were made, and Kingship itself first took rise, 
 is again exhibited in the history of these Two. 
 
 We have had many civil-wars in England ; wars of 
 Red and White Roses,^ w ars of Simon de Montfort ; '^ 
 wars enough, which are not very memorable. But 
 that war of the Puritans has a significance which 
 belongs to no one of the others. Trusting to your can- 
 dour, which will suggest on the other side what I have 
 not room to say, I will call it a section once more of 
 that great universal war which alone makes-up the 
 true History of the World, — the war of Belief against 
 
 1 Between the houses of Lancaster (red) and York (white), 
 1450-1485. 
 
 ^ About 1208-1265 ; leader of insurgent barons against Henry 
 III. 
 
284 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Unbelief! The struggle of men intent on the real 
 essence of things, against men intent on the sem- 
 blances and forms of things. The Puritans, to many, 
 seem mere savage Iconoclasts,^ fierce destroyers of 
 Forms ; but it were more just to call them haters of 
 iintme Forms. I hope we know how to respect Laud ^ 
 and his King as well as them. Poor Laud seems to me 
 to have been weak and ill-starred, not dishonest ; an 
 unfortunate Pedant rather than anything worse. His 
 ' Dreams ' and superstitions, at which they laugh so, 
 have an affectionate, lovable kind of character. He is 
 like a College-Tutor, whose whole world is forms. Col- 
 lege-rules ; whose notion is that these are the life and 
 safety of the world. He is placed suddenly, with that 
 imalterable lucldess notion of his, at the head not of a 
 College but of a Nation, to regulate the most complex 
 deep-reaching interests of men. He thinks they ought 
 to go by the old decent regulations ; nay that their sal- 
 vation will lie in extending and improving these. Like 
 a weak man, he drives with spasmodic vehemence 
 towards his purpose ; cramps laimself to it, heeding no 
 voice of prudence, no cry of pity : He will have his 
 College-rules obeyed by his Collegians ; that first ; and 
 till that, nothing. He is an ill-starred Pedant, as I 
 said. He would have it the world was a College of 
 that kind, and the world was not that. Alas, was not 
 his doom stern enough ? Whatever wrongs he did, 
 were they not aU frightfully avenged on him? 
 
 ^ Image-breakers. 
 
 2 1573-1645 ; Archbishop of Canterbury, — a chief object of 
 Puritan hostility. Laud and bis king (Charles I, 1600-1649) 
 were both beheaded. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 285 
 
 It is meritorious to insist on forms ; Religion and 
 all else natui'ally clothes itself in forms. Everywhere 
 the formed world is the only habitable one. The 
 naked formlessness of Puritanism is not the thing I 
 praise in the Puritans ; it is the thing I pity, — prais- 
 ing only the spirit which had rendered that inevitable ! 
 All substances clothe themselves in forms : but there 
 are suitable true forms, and then there are untrue 
 unsuitable. As the briefest definition, one might say, 
 Forms which grow round a substance, if we rightly 
 understand that, will correspond to the real nature 
 and purport of it, will be true, good ; forms which 
 are consciously j)ut round a substance, bad. I invite 
 you to reflect on this. It distinguishes true from false 
 in Ceremonial Form, earnest solemnity from empty 
 pageant, in all human things. 
 
 There must be a veracity, a natural spontaneity 
 in forms. In the commonest meeting of men, a per- 
 son making, what we call, ' Set speeches, ' is not he 
 an offence? In the mere drawing-room, whatsoever 
 courtesies you see to be grimaces, jirompted by no 
 spontaneous reality within, are a thing you wish to 
 get away from. But suppose now it were some mat- 
 ter of vital concernment, some transcendent matter 
 (as Divine Worship is), about which your whole soul, 
 struck dumb with its excess of feeling, knew not 
 how io form itself into utterance at all, and preferred 
 formless silence to any utterance there possible, — 
 what should we say of a man coming forward to re- 
 present or utter it for you in the way of upholsterer- 
 mummery? Such a man, — let him depart swiftly, if 
 he love himself ! You have lost your only son ; are 
 
286 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 mute, struck down, without even tears: an importunate 
 man importunately offers to celebrate Funeral Games 
 for him in the manner of the Greeks ! Such mummery 
 is not only not to be accepted, — it is hateful, unen- 
 durable. It is what the old Prophets called ' Idolatry,' 
 worshipping of hollow shows ; what all earnest men do 
 and will reject. We can partly understand what those 
 poor Puritans meant. Laud dedicating that St. Cath- 
 erine Creed's Church,^ in the manner we have it de- 
 scribed ; with his multiplied ceremonial bowings, gestic- 
 idations, exclamations : surely it is rather the rigorous 
 formal Pedant^ mtent on his ' College-rules,' than the 
 earnest Prophet, intent on the essence of the matter. 
 
 Puritanism found siich forms insupportable; tram- 
 pled on such forms : — we have to excuse it for saying. 
 No form at all rather than such I It stood preaching 
 in its bare pulpit, with nothing but the Bible in its 
 hand. Nay, a man preaching from his earnest soul 
 into the earnest souls of men : is not this virtually the 
 essence of all Churches whatsoever? The nakedest, 
 savagest reality, I say, is preferable to any semblance, 
 however dignified. Besides, it will clothe itself with 
 due semblance by and by, if it be real. No fear of 
 that ; actually no fear at all. Given the living man, 
 there will be found clothes for him ; he will find him- 
 self clothes. But the suit-of-clothes pretending that it 
 is both clothes and man — ! — We cannot ' fight 
 the French ' by three-hundred-thousand red uniforms ; 
 there must be men in the inside of them ! Semblance, 
 I assert, must actually not divorce itself fi*om Reality. 
 
 ^ In London, January', 1631, thereby giving fresh offense to 
 the Puritans. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 287 
 
 If Semblance do, — why then there must be men found 
 to rebel against Semblance, for it has become a lie ! 
 These two Antagonisms at war here, in the case of 
 .Laud and the Puritans, are as old nearly as the world. 
 They went to fierce battle over England in that age ; 
 and fought-out their confused controversy to a certain 
 length, with many results for all of us. 
 
 In the age which directly followed that of the Puri- 
 tans, their cause or themselves were little likely to 
 have justice done them. Charles Second ^ and his 
 Rochesters were not the kind of men you would set to 
 judge what the worth or meaning of such men might 
 have been. That there could be any faith or truth in 
 the life of a man, was what these poor Rochesters, and 
 the age they ushered-in, had foi'gotten. Puritanism 
 was hung on gibbets, — like the bones of the leading 
 Puritans. Its work nevertheless went on accomplish- 
 ing itself. All true work of a man, hang the author 
 of it on what gibbet you like, must and will accom- 
 plish itself. We have our Haheas-Corpus, our free 
 Representation of the People ; acknowledgment, wide 
 as the world, that all men are, or else must, shall, and 
 wiU become, what we call/Vee men; — men with their 
 life grounded on reality and justice, not on tradition, 
 which has become unjust and a chimera! This in part, 
 and much besides this,^ was the work of the Puritans. 
 
 ^ 1G30-1685 ; " restored " 16G0. Rochester was one of the 
 most corrupt favorites of his corrupt court ; also a skillful versi- 
 fier. 
 
 ^ " Slowly hut steadily it introduced its own seriousness and 
 purity into English society, English literature, Englisli politics. 
 The whole history of English progress since the Restoration, on its 
 
288 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 And indeed, as these things became gradually mani- 
 fest, the character of the Puritans began to clear it- 
 self. Their memories were, one after another, taken 
 down from the gibbet ; nay a certain portion of them 
 are now, in these days, as good as canonised. Eliot,^ 
 Hampden,^ Pp^i^ ^^J Ludlow,^ Plutchinson,^ Vane^ 
 himself, are admitted to be a kind of Heroes ; politi- 
 cal Conscript Fathers,* to whom in no small d«?gree 
 we owe what makes us a free England : it would not be 
 safe for anybody to designate these men as wicked now. 
 Few Puritans of note but find their apologists some- 
 where, and have a certain reverence paid them by ear- 
 nest men. One Puritan, I think, and almost he" alone, 
 our poor Cromwell, seems to hang yet on the gibbet, 
 and find no hearty apologist anywhere. Him neither 
 saint nor sinner will acquit of great wickedness. A 
 man of ability, infinite talent, courage, and so forth : 
 but he betrayed the Cause. Selfish ambition, dishon- 
 esty, duplicity ; a fierce, coarse, hypocritical TarUife. ; ^ 
 turning all that noble Struggle for constitutional 
 Liberty into a sorry farce played for his own benefit : 
 this and worse is the character they give of Cromwell. 
 And then there come contrasts with Washington and 
 others ; above all, with these noble Pyms and Hamp- 
 dens, whose noble work he stole for himself, and 
 ruined into a futility and deformit3^ 
 
 moral and spiritual sides, has been the history of Puritanism." 
 J. R. Green, SJiort History of the English People, III, 1285 (N. Y. 
 1894). 
 
 ^ See later notes. 
 
 2 One of the Regicides, 1G17C?)-1692 ; died in exile. 
 
 "^ The Younger, born 1612, beheaded 1662. 
 
 ^ Title of the Senators of ancient Rome. 
 
 ^Hero of Molifere's comedy of same name, 1667. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 289 
 
 This view of Cromwell seems to me the not unnatural 
 product of a century like the Eighteenth. As we said 
 of the Valet, so of the Sceptic : He does not know a 
 Hero when he sees him! The Valet expected purple 
 mantles, gilt sceptres, bodyguards and flourishes of 
 trumpets : the Sceptic of the Eighteenth century looks 
 for regulated respectable Formulas, 'Principles,' or 
 what else he may call them ; a style of speech and 
 conduct which has got to seem ' respectable,' which can 
 plead for itself in a handsome articulate manner, and 
 gain the suffrages of an enlightened sceptical Eight- 
 eenth century ! It is, at bottom, the same thing that 
 both the Valet and he expect : the garnitures of some 
 acknowledged royalty, which then they will acknow- 
 ledge ! The King coming to them in the rugged ^ln- 
 formulistic state shall be no King. 
 
 For my own share, far be it from me to say or in- 
 sinuate a word of disparagement against such charac- 
 ters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym ; whom I believe to have 
 been right worthy and useful men. I have read dili- 
 gently what books and documents about them I could 
 come at ; — with the honestest wish to admire, to love 
 and worship them like Heroes ; but I am sorry to say, 
 if the real truth must be told, with very indifferent 
 success ! At bottom, I found that it woidd not do. 
 They are very noble men, these ; step along in their 
 stately way, with their measured euphemisms, philoso- 
 phies, parliamentary eloquences, Ship-moneys,^ Mon- 
 
 ^ An obsolete tax which Charles I sought to revive by way of 
 raising money independently of Parliament. Hampden (1594- 
 1643) led the resistance against its payment in 1G37, and as a 
 result was for a time imprisoned. 
 
290 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 archies of Man ; ^ a most constitutional, unblamable, 
 dignified set of men. But the heart remains cold 
 before them ; the fancy alone endeavours to get-up 
 some worship of them. "What man's heart does, in 
 reality, break-forth into any fire of brotherly love for 
 these men ? They are become dreadfully dull men ! 
 One breaks-down often enough in the constitutional 
 eloquence of the admirable Pyin,^ with his ' seventhly 
 and lastly.' You find that it may be the admirablest 
 thing in the world, but that it is heavy, — heavy as 
 lead, barren as brick-clay ; that, in a word, for you 
 there is little or nothing now surviving there ! One 
 leaves all these Nobilities standing in their niches of 
 honour: the rugged outcast Cromwell, he is the man 
 of them all in whom one still finds human stuff. The 
 great savage Baresark: ^ he could write no euphemistic 
 Monarchy of Man ; did not speak, did not work with 
 glib regularity ; had no straight story to tell for him- 
 self anywhere. But he stood bare, not cased in euphe- 
 mistic coat-of-mail ; he grappled like a giant, face to 
 face, heart to heart, with the naked truth of things ! 
 That, after all, is the sort of man for one. I plead 
 guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of 
 men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one 
 finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a 
 
 ^ Eliot, imprisoned iu the Tower of London on charge of con- 
 spiracy against the King, wrote the Monarchy of Man (1630). He 
 refused to win his freedom by acknowledging himself wrong in 
 his conduct towards the King, and died in the Tower, 1G32. 
 
 2 1584-1643. 
 
 ^ " Bare shirt " {i. e. without armor), from the supposed (mis- 
 taken) etymology of " berserk " (a wild Norse warrior) which 
 means a shirt or coat of bear skin. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 291 
 
 man for keeping his hands cl^an, who would not touch 
 the work but with gloves on ! 
 
 Neither, on the whole, does this constitutional tol- 
 erance of the Eighteenth century for the other happier 
 Puritans seen 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 sorrowfid thing 
 to consider that the foundation of our English Liber- 
 ties should have been laid by ' Superstition.' These 
 Puritans came forward with Calvinistic incredible 
 Creeds, Anti-Laudisms, Westminster Confessions; 
 demanding, chiefly of all, that they should have 
 liberty to worshi]} in their own way. Liberty to fax 
 themselves : that was the thing they should have 
 demanded ! It was Superstition, Fanaticism, disgrace- 
 ful ignorance of Constitutional Philosophy to insist 
 on the other thing ! — Liberty to tax oneself ? Not to 
 pay-out money from your pocket except on reason 
 shown? No century, I think, but a rather barren one 
 would have fixed on that as the first right of man ! 
 I should say, on the contrary, A just man will gen- 
 erally have better cause than money in what shape 
 soever, before deciding to revolt against his Govern- 
 ment. Ours is a most confused world ; in which a 
 good man will be thankful to see any kind of Govern- 
 ment maintain itself in a not insupportable manner: 
 and here in England, to this .hour, if he is not ready 
 to pay a great many taxes which he can see very small 
 reason in, it will not go well with him, I think ! He 
 must try some other climate than this. Taxgatherer ? 
 Money ? He will say : " Take my money, since you 
 can, and it is so desirable to you ; take it, — and take 
 
292 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 yourself away with it ; and leave me alone to my 
 work here. / am still here ; can still work, after all 
 the money you have taken from me ! " But if they 
 come to hun, and say, "• Acknowledge a Lie ; j^retend 
 to say you are worshipping God, when you are not 
 doing it : believe not the thing that yoii find true, but 
 the thing that I find, or pretend to find true ! " He 
 will answer : " No ; by God's help, no ! You may 
 take my purse ; but I cannot have my moral Self 
 annihilated. The purse is any Highwayman's who 
 might meet me with a loaded pistol : but the Self is 
 mine and God my Maker's ; it is not yours ; and I 
 will resist you to the death, and revolt against you, 
 and, on the whole, front all manner of extremities, 
 accusations and confusions, in defence of that ! " — 
 
 Really, it seems to me the one reason which could 
 justify revolting, this of the Puritans. It has been the 
 soul of all just revolts among men. Not Hunger alone 
 produced even the French Revolution ; no, but the 
 feeling of the insupportable all-pervading Falsehood 
 which had now embodied itself in Hunger, in universal 
 material Scarcity and Nonentity, and thereby become 
 indisputably false in the eyes of all! We will leave 
 the Eighteenth century with its ' liberty to tax itself.' 
 We will not astonish ourselves that the meaning of 
 such men as the Puritans remained dim to it. To men 
 who believe in no reality at all, how shall a real human 
 soul, the intensest of all realities, as it were the voice 
 of this world's Maker stiU speaking to us, — be intelli- 
 gible ? What it cannot reduce into constitutional doc- 
 trines relative to ' taxing,' or other the like material 
 interest, gross, palpable to the sense, such a century 
 
THE HERO AS KING 293 
 
 will needs reject as an amorphous heap of rulbbish. 
 Hampdens, Pyms and Ship-money will be the theme 
 of much constitutional eloquence, striving to be fervid; 
 — which will glitter, if not as fire does, then as ice 
 does : and the irreducible Cromwell will remain a 
 chaotic mass of ' madness,' ' hypocrisy,' and much else. 
 
 From of old, I will confess, this theory of Crom- 
 well's falsity has been incredible to me. Nay I cannot 
 believe the like, of any Great Man whatever. _ Multi- 
 tudes of Great Men figure in History as false selfish 
 men ; but if we will consider it, they are but figures 
 for us, unintelligible shadows ; we do not see into them 
 as men that could have existed at all. A supei-ficial 
 unbelieving generation only, with no eye but for the 
 surfaces and semblances of things, coidd form such no- 
 tions of Great Men. Can a great soul be possible with- 
 out a conscience in it, the essence of all real souls, 
 great or small? — No, we cannot figure Cromwell 
 as a Falsity and Fatuity ; the longer I study him and 
 his career, I believe this the less. Why should we? 
 There is no evidence of it. Is it not strange that, 
 after all the mountains of calumny this man has been 
 subject to, after being represented as the very prince 
 of liars, who never, or hardly ever, spoke truth, but 
 always some cunning counterfeit of truth, there should 
 not yet have been one falsehood clearly brought home 
 to him? A prince of liars, and no lie spoken by him. 
 Not one that I could yet get sight of. It is like 
 Pococke asking Grotius, Where is your lyroof of Ma- 
 homet's Pigeon ? No proof ! — Let us leave all these 
 calumnious chimeras, as chimeras ought to be left. 
 
294 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 They are not portraits of the man ; they are distracted 
 phantasms of him, the joint product of hatred and 
 darkness. 
 
 Looking at the man's life with our own eyes, it seems 
 to me, a very different hyjiothesis suggests itself. What 
 little we know of his earlier obscure years, distorted 
 as it has come down to us, does it not all betoken an 
 earnest, affectionate, sincere kind of man? His nervous 
 melancholic temperament indicates rather a seriousness 
 too deep for him. Of those stories of ' Spectres ; ' of 
 the white Spectre 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 
 saio him sell himself before Worcester Fight ! ^ But 
 the mournful, over-sensitive, hypochondriac humour of 
 Oliver, in his young years, is otherwise indisputably 
 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 near dying, and " had fancies about 
 the Towncross." These things are significant. Such 
 an excitable deep-feeling nature, in that rugged stub- 
 born strength of his, is not the sj^mptom 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 
 
 ^ September 3, 1G51; Cromwell defeated the Scotch Royalists 
 led by Charles II. 
 
 2 About forty-four to sixty miles north of LondoJi; Cromwell 
 was born there, April 25, 1599. St. Ives and Ely, where he lived 
 later, are not far off, toward the east. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 295 
 
 the dissipations of youth ; but if so, speedily repents, 
 abandons all this : not much above twenty, he is mar- 
 ried, settled as an altogether grave and quiet man. 
 ' He pays-back what 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 worldly slough, 
 to see into the awful truth of things ; — to see that 
 Time and its shows all rested on Eternity, and this 
 poor Earth of ours was the threshold either of Heaven 
 or of Hell ! Oliver's life at St. Ives 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 en- 
 rich him. He tills the earth ; he reads his Bible ; daily 
 assembles his servants 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 ' hyjjo- 
 crisy,' 'ambition,' 'cant,' or other falsity? The man's 
 hopes, I do believe, were fixed on the other Higher 
 World ; his aim to get well thither, by walking well 
 through his humble course in this world. He courts 
 no notice : what could notice here do for him ? ' Ever 
 in his great Taskmaster's eye.' ^ 
 
 It is striking, too, how he comes-out once into pub- 
 lic view ; he, since no other is willing to come : in 
 resistance to a public grievance. I mean, in that mat- 
 
 ^ All is, if I have grace to use it so 
 As ever in my great Task-master's eye. 
 — Milton's sonnet, On arriving at the age of twenty-three. 
 
296 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 ter of the Bedford Fens.^ No one else will go to law 
 with Authority ; therefore he will. That matter once 
 settled, he returns back into obscurity, to his Bible 
 and his Plough. ' Gain influence ' ? His influence is 
 the most legitimate ; derived from personal knowledge 
 of him, as a just, religious, reasonable, and determined 
 man. In this way he has lived till past forty ; old age 
 is now in view of him, and the earnest portal of Death 
 and Eternity ; it was at this point that he suddenly 
 became ' ambitious ' ! I do not interpret his Parlia/- 
 mentary mission in that way ! 
 
 His successes in Parliament, his successes through 
 the war, are honest successes of a brave man ; who 
 has more resolution in the heart of him, more light in 
 the head of him than other men. His prayers to God ; 
 his spoken thanks to the God of Victory, who had 
 preserved him safe, and carried him forward so far, 
 through the furious clash of a world all set in conflict, 
 through desperate-looking envelopments at Dunbar; 2 
 through the death-hail of so many battles ; mercy 
 after mercy; to the 'crowning mercy '^ of AVorcester 
 Fight : all this is good and genuine for a deep-hearted 
 Calvinistic Cromwell. Only to vain unbelieving Cava- 
 liers, worshipping not God but their own ' lovelocks,' 
 frivolities and formalities, living quite apart from con- 
 templations of God, living without God in the world, 
 need it seem hypocritical. 
 
 Nor will liis participation in the King's death 
 
 ^ The draining of the Fens in 1G37. 
 
 2 September 3, 1650; the account of this battle is one of the 
 most striking passages in Carlyle's Cromivell. 
 ^ Cromwell's own phrase. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 297 
 
 involve him in condemnation with us. It is a stern 
 business killing of a King ! But if you once go to war 
 with him, it lies there ; this and all else lies there. 
 Once at war, you have made wager of 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 vanquished Charles First, had 
 no way of making any tenable arrangement with him. 
 The large Presbyterian party, apprehensive now of the 
 Independents, w^ere most anxious to do so ; anxious 
 indeed as for their own existence ; but it could not be. 
 The unhappy Charles, in those final Hampton-Court ^ 
 negotiations, shows himself as a man fatally incapable 
 of being dealt with. A man who, once for all, could 
 not and would not understand : — whose thought did 
 not in any measure represent to him the real fact of 
 the matter ; nay worse, whose word did not at all 
 represent his thought. We may say this of him with- 
 out 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-off 
 party against party, ^nd smuggle himself into his old 
 power by deceiving both. Alas, they both discovered 
 that be was deceiving them. A man whose word will 
 not inform you at all what he means or will d«, is not 
 a man you can bargain with. You must get oiit of 
 that man's way, or put him out of yours ! The Pres- 
 byterians, in their despair, were still for believing 
 
 ^ A royal palace on the Thames, several miles above London, 
 whither Charles was brought in 1647. 
 
298 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Charles, though found false, unbelievable again and 
 again. Not so Cromwell : " For all our fighting," says 
 he, " we are to have a little bit of paper ? " No ! — 
 
 In fact, everywhere we have to note the decisive 
 practical 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 
 discern even practical truth. Cromwell's advice about 
 the Parliament's Army, early in the contest. How they 
 were to dismiss their city-tajosters, flimsy riotous per- 
 sons, and choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was 
 in the work, to be soldiers for them : this is advice 
 by a man who saw. Fact answers, if you see into 
 Fact ! Cromwell's Ironsides were the embodiment 
 of this insight of his ; men fearing God ; and with- 
 out any other fear. No more conclusively genuine set 
 of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any 
 other land. 
 
 Neither will we blame greatly that word of Crom- 
 well's to them ; which was so blamed : " If the King 
 should meet me in battle, I would kill the King." . 
 Why not ? These words were spoken to men who stood 
 as before a Higher than Kings. They had set more 
 than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament may 
 call it, in official language, a fighting '•for the King ; ' 
 but we, for our share, cannot understand that. To us 
 it is no dilettante work, no sleek officiality ; it is sheer 
 rough death and earnest. They have brought it to the 
 calling-forth of War; horrid internecine fight, man 
 grappling with man in fire-eyed rage, — the infernal 
 
THE HERO AS KING 299 
 
 element in man called forth, to try it by that ! Do 
 that therefore ; since that is the thing to be done. — 
 The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural 
 thing ! Since he was not shot in battle, they were an 
 inevitable thing. That such a man, with the eye to 
 see, with the heart to dare, shoidd advance, from post 
 to post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon 
 Farmer became, by whatever name you might call 
 him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in England, 
 virtually the King of England, requires no magic to 
 explain it ! — 
 
 Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, 
 to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity ; 
 not to know a Sincerity when they see it. For this 
 world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal ? The 
 heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect 
 remains is merely the vulpine intellect. That a true 
 King be sent them is of small use ; they do not know 
 him when sent. They say scornfidly, Is tliis your 
 King ? The Hero wastes his heroic faculty in bootless 
 contradiction from the unworthy ; and can accomplish 
 little. For himself he does accomplish a heroic life, 
 which is much, which is all ; but for the world he 
 accomplishes comparatively nothing. The wild rude 
 Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not glib in answering 
 from the witness-box : in your small-debt pie-ponKler^ 
 court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine 
 intellect ' detects ' him. For being a man worth any 
 
 ^ From Ft. pied (foot) and poudre (dust), " diisty foot," i. e., 
 peddler. An inferior court for the immediate trial of disputes 
 arising at fairs and other places where peddlers most do congre- 
 gate. 
 
300 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 thousand men, the response your Knox, your Cromwell 
 gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he was 
 a man at all. God's greatest gift to this Earth is sneer- 
 ingly flung away. The miraculous talisman is a paltry 
 plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops as a common 
 guinea. 
 
 Lamentable this ! I say, this must be remedied. Till 
 this be remedied in some measure, there is nothing 
 remedied. ' Detect quacks ' ? Yes do, for Heaven's 
 sake ; but know withal the men that are to be trusted ! 
 Till we know that, what is all our knowledge ; how 
 shall we even so much as ' detect ' ? For the vulpine 
 sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, 
 and ' detects ' in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes 
 indeed are many : but, of all dupes, there is none so 
 fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of 
 being duped. The world does exist ; the world has 
 truth in it, or it woidd not exist ! First recognise 
 what is true, we shall then discern what is false ; and 
 properly never till then. 
 
 ' Know the men that are to be trusted ; ' alas, 
 this is yet, in these days, very far from us. The sin- 
 cere alone can recognise sincerity. Not a Hero only 
 is needed, but a world fit for him ; a world not of 
 Valets ; — the Hero comes almost in vain to it other- 
 wise ! Yes, it is far from us : but it must come ; thank 
 God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what have 
 we ? Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions : — if 
 we are as Valets, and do not know the Hero when we 
 see him, what good are all tliese ? A heroic Cromwell 
 comes ; and for a hundred-and-fifty years he cannot 
 have a vote from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving 
 
THE HERO AS KING 301 
 
 world is the natural jjropertt/ of the Quack, and of 
 the Father of quacks and quackeries ! Misery, confu- 
 sion, un veracity are alone possible there. By ballot- 
 boxes we alter the figure of our Quack ; but the 
 substance of him continues. The Valet- World has to 
 be governed by the Sham-Hei'o, by the King merely 
 dressed in King-gear. It is his ; he is its ! In bi'ief, 
 one of two things : We shall either learn to know a 
 Hero, a true Governor and Captain, somewhat better, 
 when we see him ; or else go on to be forever governed 
 by the Unheroic ; — had we ballot-boxes clattering at 
 every street-corner, there were no remedy in these. 
 
 Poor Cromwell, — great Cromwell ! The inarticu- 
 late Prophet ; Prophet who could not speak. Rude, 
 confused, struggling to utter himself, with his savage 
 depth, with his wild sincerity ; and he looked so 
 strange, among the elegant Euphemism s,^ dainty little 
 Falklands,'-^ didactic Chillingworths,^ diplomatic Clar- 
 endons ! * Consider him. An outer hull of chaotic 
 confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, al- 
 most semi-madness ; and yet such a clear determinate 
 man's-energy working in the heart of that. A kind of 
 chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, 
 working in such an element of boundless hypochon- 
 dria, wwformed black of darkness ! And yet withal 
 this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness 
 
 ^ The avoidance of calling things by their right names, for 
 the sake of greater pleasantness or delicacy or smoothness. 
 " Smoothshaven respectabilities" of speech. 
 
 ^ Statesman (c. 1610-1643); served in Koyalist Army. 
 
 ^ Clergyman (1602-1644); served in Royalist Army. 
 
 * Royalist parliamentarian (1608-1674) ; wrote History of the 
 Rebellion. 
 
302 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 of the man ? The depth and tenderness of his wild 
 affections : the quantity of sympathy he had with 
 things, — the quantity of insight he would yet get 
 into the heart of things, the mastery he would yet get 
 over things : this was his hyijochondria. The man's 
 misery, as man's misery always does, came of his 
 greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. 
 Sorrow-stricken, half -distracted ; the wild element of 
 mournful hlach enveloping him, — wide as the world. 
 It is the character of a prophetic man ; a man with 
 his whole soul seeing^ and struggling to see. 
 
 On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's 
 reputed confusion of speech. To himself the internal 
 meaning was sun-clear ; but the material with which 
 he was to clothe it in utterance was not thei-e. He 
 had lived silent ; a great unnamed sea of Thought 
 round him all his days ; and in his way of life little 
 call to attempt naming or uttering that. With his 
 sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, 1 
 doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, 
 and speak fluently enough ; — he did harder things 
 than wi'iting of Books. This kind of man is precisely 
 he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will 
 set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and logi- 
 cising; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, Vlr-tus, 
 manhood, herohood, is not fair-spoken immaculate reg- 
 ularity ; it is first of all, what the Germans well 
 name it, Tug end (^Taicgend, do7v-mg or Dovgh-tiness), 
 Courage and the Faculty to do. This basis of the 
 matter Cromwell had in him. 
 
 One understands moreover how, though he could 
 not speak in Parliament, he might ^>r(?acA, rhapsodic 
 
THE HERO AS KING 303 
 
 preaching ; above all, how he might be great in extem- 
 pore 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. Crom- 
 well's habit of prayer is a notable feature of him. All 
 his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In 
 dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and 
 he used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, 
 for days, till some definite resolution rose among them, 
 some ' door of hope,' as they would name it, disclosed 
 itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, 
 and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to 
 make His light shine before them. They, armed Sol- 
 diers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be ; a little 
 band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword 
 against a great black devouring world not Christian, 
 but Mammonish, Devilish, — they cried to God in 
 their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the 
 Cause that was His. The light which now rose upon 
 them, — how coidd a human soul, by any means at 
 all, get better light ? Was not the purpose so formed 
 like to be precisely the best, wisest, the one to be fol- 
 lowed without hesitation any more ? To them it was 
 as the shining of Heaven's own Splendour in the 
 waste-howling darkness ; the PiUar of Fire by night, 
 that was to guide them on their desolate perilous way. 
 Was it not such ? Can a man's soul, to this hour, get 
 guidance by any other method than intrinsically by 
 that same, — devout prostration of the earnest strug- 
 gling soul before the Highest, the Giver of all Light ; 
 be such prayer a spoken, articulate, or be it a voice- 
 less, inarticulate one? There is no other method. 
 
304 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 ' Hypocrisy ' ? One begins to be weary of all tliat. 
 They who call it so, have no right to speak on such 
 matters. They never formed a jiurpose, what one can 
 call a purpose. They went about balancing expedi- 
 encies, plausibilities ; gathering votes, advices ; they 
 never were alone with the truth of a thing at all. — 
 Cromwell's prayers were likely to be ' eloquent,' and 
 much more than that. His was the heart of a man 
 who could pray. 
 
 But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were 
 not nearly so ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We 
 find he was, what all speakers aim to be, an impressive 
 speaker, even in Parliament ; one who, from the first, 
 had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, 
 he was always understood to mean something, and 
 men wished to know what. He disregarded eloquence, 
 nay despised and disliked it ; spoke always without 
 premeditation of the words he was to use. The Re- 
 porters, too, in those days seem to have been singu- 
 larly candid ; and to have given the Printer precisely 
 what they found on their own note-paper. And 
 withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being 
 the premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a 
 play before the world. That to the last he took no 
 more charge of his Speeches ! How came he not to 
 study his words a little, before flinging them out to 
 the public ? If the words were true words, they could 
 be left to shift for themselves. 
 
 But with regard to Cromwell's ' lying,' we will make 
 one remark. This, I suppose, or something like this, 
 to have been the nature of it. All parties found them- 
 selves deceived in him ; each party understood him to 
 
THE HERO AS KING 305 
 
 be meaning this, heard him even say so, and behold 
 he turns-out to have been meaning that ! He was, cry 
 they, the chief of liars. But now, intrinsically, is not 
 all this the inevitable fortune, not of a false man in 
 such times, but simply of a superior man ? Such a 
 man must have reticences in him. If he walk wearing 
 his heart upon his sleeve for daws to peck at, his 
 journey will not extend far ! There is no use for any 
 man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. 
 A man always is to be himself the judge how much of 
 his mind he will show to other men ; even to those 
 he woidd have work along with him. There are im- 
 pertinent inquiries made : your rule is, to leave the 
 inquirer ^minformed on that matter ; not, if you can 
 help it, w^isinformed, but precisely as dark as he was ! 
 This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is 
 what the wise and faithful man would aim to answer 
 in such a case. 
 
 Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dia- 
 lect of small subaltern parties ; uttered to them a 
 part of his mind. Each little party thought him all 
 its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find him 
 not of their party, but of his own party ! Was it his 
 blame? At all seasons of his history he must have 
 felt, among such people, how, if he explained to them 
 the deeper insight he had, they must either have shud- 
 dered aghast at it, or believing it, their own little 
 compact hypothesis must have gone wholly to wreck. 
 They could not have worked in his province any 
 more ; nay perhaps they could not now have worked 
 in their o^vn province. It is the inevitable position of 
 a great man among small men. Small men, most 
 
306 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 active, useful, are to be seen everywhere, whose whole 
 activity depends on some conviction which to you is 
 palpably a lunited one ; imperfect, what we call an 
 error. But would it be a kindness always, is it a duty 
 always or often, to disturb them in that? Many a 
 man, doing loud work in the world, stands only on 
 some thin traditionality, cpnventionality ; to him in- 
 dubitable, to you incredible : break that beneath him, 
 he sinks to endless depths ! " I might have my hand 
 full of truth," said Fontenelle,^ "and open only my 
 little finger." 
 
 And if this be the fact even in matters of doctrine, 
 how much more in all departments of practice ! He 
 that cannot withal keep his mind to himself cannot 
 practise any considerable thing whatever. And we call 
 it ' dissimulation, ' all this? What would you think of 
 calling the general of an army a dissembler because 
 he did not tell every corporal and private soldier, who 
 pleased to put the question, what his thoughts were 
 about everything ? — Cromwell, I should rather say, 
 managed all this in a manner we must admire for its 
 perfection. An endless vortex of such questioning 
 * corporals ' rolled confusedly round him through his 
 whole course ; whom he did answer. It must have 
 been as a great true-seeing man that he managed this 
 too. Not one proved falsehood, as I said ; not one ! 
 Of what man that ever wound himself through such 
 a coil of things will you say so much ? — 
 
 But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, 
 which pervert to the very basis our judgments formed 
 ^ French poet and prose-writer (1657-1757). 
 
THE HERO AS KING 307 
 
 about such men as Cromwell ; about their ' ambi- 
 tion,' ' falsity,' and suchlike. The first is what I might 
 call substituting the goal of their career for the course 
 and starting-point of it. The vulgar Historian of a 
 Cromwell fancies that he had determined on being 
 Protector of England, at the time when he was 
 ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His 
 career lay all mapped-out : a program of the whole 
 drama ; which he then step by step dramatically 
 unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive dra- 
 maturgy, . as he went on, — the hollow, scheming 
 'Yttok/ditt/s, or Play-actor, that he was ! This is a rad- 
 ical perversion ; all but universal in such cases. And 
 think for an instant how different the fact is ! How 
 much does one of us foresee of his own life ? Short 
 way ahead of us it is all dim ; an ?^;iwound skein of 
 possibilities, of apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague- 
 looming hopes. This Cromwell had not his life lying 
 all in that fashion of Program, which he needed then, 
 with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact 
 dramatically, scene after scene ! Not so. We see it 
 so ; but to him it was in no measure so. What ab- 
 surdities would fall-away of themselves, were this one 
 undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History ! 
 Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in 
 view ; — but look whether such is practically the fact ! 
 Vulgar History, as in this Cromwell's case, omits it 
 altogether ; even the best kinds of History only re- 
 member it now and then. To remember it duly with 
 rigorous perfection, as in the fact it stood, requires 
 indeed a rare faculty ; rare, nay impossible. A very 
 Shakspeare for faculty ; or more than Shakspeare ; 
 
308 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 who could enact a brother man's biography, see with 
 the brother man's eyes at all points of his course what 
 things he saw ; in short, hnow his course and him, as 
 few ' Historians ' are like to do. Half or more of all 
 the thick-plied perversions which distort our image of 
 Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as 
 try to represent them so ; in sequence, as they were ; 
 not in the lump, as they are thrown-down before us. 
 
 But a second error, which I think the generality 
 commit, refers to this same 'ambition' itself. We ex- 
 aggerate the ambition of Great Men ; we mistake wliat 
 the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in 
 that sense ; he is a small poor man that is ambitious 
 so. Examine the man who lives in misery because he 
 does not shine above other men ; who goes about pro- 
 ducing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and 
 claims ; struggling to force everybod}'^, as it were beg- 
 ging everybody for God's sake, to acknowledge him a 
 great man, and set him over the heads of men !• Such 
 a creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under 
 tliis sun. A great man? A poor morbid prurient 
 empty man ; fitter for the ward of a hospital, than for 
 a throne among men. I advise you to keep-out of his 
 way. He cannot walk on quiet jjaths ; unless you will 
 look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about 
 him, he cannot live. It is the emptiness of the man, 
 not his greatness. Because there is nothing in himself, 
 he hungers and thirsts that you would find something 
 in him. In good truth, I believe no great man, not so 
 much as a genuine man who had health and real sub- 
 stance in him of whatever magnitude, was ever much 
 tormented in this way. 
 
THE HERD AS KING ,309 
 
 Your Cromwell, what good could it do him to be 
 * noticed ' by noisy crowds of people ? God his maker 
 already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was ali*eady there ; 
 no notice would make him other than he already was. 
 Till his hair was grown gray ; and Life from the down- 
 hill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but 
 finite, and all a measurable matter hoio it went, — he 
 had been content to plough the ground, and read his 
 Bible. He in his old days could not support it any 
 longer, without selling himseK to Falsehood, that he 
 might ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall,^ and have 
 clerks with bundles of papers haunting him, " Decide 
 this, decide that," which in utmost sorrow of heart no 
 man can perfectly decide ! What could gilt cal-riages 
 do for this man ? From of old, was there not in his 
 life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendour 
 as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man 
 set him beyond need of gilding. Death, Judgment 
 and Eternity : these already lay as the background of 
 whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt 
 as in the sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech 
 of a mortal could name. God's AVord, as the Puritan 
 prophets of that time had read it : this was great, and 
 all else was little to him. To call such a man ' ambi- 
 tious,' to figure him as the prurient windbag described 
 above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man 
 will say : " Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, 
 keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your 
 important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone ; 
 there is too much of life in me already ! " Old Samuel 
 
 ^ Royal residence iu Loudon in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries. 
 
310. LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was 
 not ambitions. ' Corsica Boswell ' ^ flaunted at public 
 shows with printed ribbons round his hat ; but the 
 great old Samuel stayed at home. The world-wide 
 soul wrapt-up in its thoughts, in its sorrows ; — what 
 would paradings, and ribbons in the hat, do for it ? 
 
 Ah yes, I will say again : The great silent men ! 
 Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, 
 words with little meaning, actions with little worth, 
 one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence. 
 The noble silent men, scattered here and there, each 
 in his department ; silently thinking, silently work- 
 ing ; whom no Morning Newspaper makes mention of ! 
 They are the salt of the Earth. A country that has 
 none or few of these is in a bad way. Like a forest 
 which had no roots ; which had all turned into leaves 
 and boughs ; — which must soon wither and be no for- 
 est. Woe for us if we had nothing but what we can 
 show, or speak. Silence, the great Empire of Silence: 
 higher than the stars ; deeper than the Kingdoms of 
 Death ! It alone is great ; all else is small. — I hope 
 we English will long maintain our grand talent pour 
 le silence. Let others that cannot do without stand- 
 ing on barrelheads, to spout, and be seen of all the 
 market-place, cultivate speech exclusively, — become 
 a most green forest without roots ! Solomon says. 
 There is a time to speak; but also a time to keep 
 silence.^ Of some great silent Samuel, not urged to 
 
 1 Bozzy earned the title by his enthusiasm for Corsica in her 
 fight for independence from France in the 1760's. 
 
 ^ To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose 
 under the heaven ; . . . A time to rend, and a time to sew; a 
 time to keep silence, and a time to speak. Eccles. iii, 1, 7. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 311 
 
 writing, as old Samuel Johnson says he was, by want 
 of money ^ and nothing- other, one might ask, " Why 
 do not you too get up and speak ; promulgate your sys- 
 tem, found your sect?" "Truly," he will answer, "I am 
 continent of my thought hitherto ; happily I have yet 
 had the ability to keep it in me, no compulsion strong 
 enough to speak it. My ' system ' is not for promul- 
 gation first of all ; it is for serving myself to live by. 
 That is the great purpose of it to me. And then the 
 ' honour ' ? Alas, yes ; — but as Cato said of the statue : 
 So many statues in that Forum of yours, may it not 
 
 be better if they ask. Where is Cato's ^ statue?" 
 
 But now, by way of counterpoise to this of Silence, 
 let me say that there are two kinds of ambition ; one 
 wholly blamable, the other laudable and inevitable. 
 Nature has provided that the great silent Samuel shall 
 not be silent too long. The selfish wish to shine over 
 others, let it be accounted altogether poor and miser- 
 able. ' Seekest thou great things? seek them not : ' 2 
 this is most true. And yet, I say, there is an irrepressi- 
 ble tendency in every man to develop himself according 
 to the magnitude which Nature has made him of ; to 
 speak-out, to act-out, what Nature has laid in him. 
 This is proper, fit, inevitable ; nay it is a duty, and 
 even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning 
 of life here on earth might be defined as consisting 
 in this : To unfold your self, to work what thing you 
 have the faculty for. It is a necessity for the human 
 
 1 The Elder, called " The Censor " (c. 234-149, B. c); Roman 
 statesman and author. 
 
 ^ And seekest thou great things for thyself ? seek them not. 
 Jer. xlv, 5. 
 
312 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 being, the first law of our existence. Coleridge beauti- 
 fully remarks that the infant learns to speak by this 
 necessity it feels. — We will say therefore : To decide 
 about ambition, whether it is bad or not, you have two 
 things to take into view. Not the coveting of the 
 place alone, but the fitness of the man for the place 
 withal : that is the question. Perhaps the place was 
 his ; perhaps he had a natural right, and even obli- 
 gation, to seek the place ! Mirabeau's ambition to be 
 Prime Minister, how shall we blame it, if he were ' the 
 only man in France that could have done any good 
 there'? Hopefuler perhaps had he not so clearly /V/i 
 how much good he could do ! But a poor Necker,^ 
 who could do no good, and had even felt that he 
 could do none, yet sitting broken-hearted because they 
 had flung him out, and he was now quit of it, well 
 niight Gibbon ^ mourn over him. — Nature, I say, has 
 provided amply that the silent great man shall strive 
 to speak withal ; too amply, rather ! 
 
 Fancy, for example, you had revealed to the brave 
 old Samuel Johnson, in his shrouded-up existence, that 
 it was possible for him to do priceless divine work for 
 his country and the whole world. That the perfect 
 Heavenly Law might be made Law on this Earth ; 
 that the prayer he prayed daily, ' Thy kingdom come,' 
 was at length to be fulfilled ! If you had convinced his 
 judgment of this ; that it was possible, practicable ; that 
 he the mournful silent Samuel was called to take a 
 
 ^ 1732-1804. It was his dismissal from control of the finances 
 of France that aroused Desmoiilins. (See p. 278, n. 1.) 
 
 2 1737-1794; author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
 Empire (1776-1788). 
 
 
THE HERO AS KING 313 
 
 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 mis- 
 givings under his feet, counting all affliction and con- 
 tradiction small, — the whole dark element of his exist- 
 ence blazing into articulate radiance of light and 
 lightning ? It were a true ambition this ! And think 
 now how it actually was with Cromwell. From of 
 old, the sufferings of God's Church, true zealous 
 Preachers of the truth flung into dungeons, whipt, set 
 on pillories, their ears cropt-off, God's Gospel-cause 
 trodden under foot of the unworthy : all this had lain 
 heavy on his soul. Long years he had looked upon it, 
 in silence, in prayer ; seeing no remedy on Earth ; 
 trusting well that a remedy in Heaven's goodness 
 would come, — that such a course was false, unjust, and 
 could not last forever. And now behold the dawn of 
 it ; after twelve years silent waiting, all England stirs 
 itself ; there is to be once more a Parliament,^ the 
 Right will get a voice for itself : inexpressible well- 
 grounded hope has come again into the Earth. Was 
 not such a Parliament worth being a member^of? 
 Cromwell threw down his ploughs, and hastened 
 thither. 
 
 He spoke there, — rugged bursts of earnestness, of 
 a seK-seen truth, where we get a glimpse of them. He 
 worked there ; he fought and strove, like a strong true 
 
 ^ In 1640. The Short Parliament sat for three weeks, in the 
 spring. In the autumn the Long Parliament convened ; being 
 "purged " in 1648 of members inclining to treat with Charles, 
 it received the name of " The Rump ; " it was forcibly dissolved 
 by Cromwell in 1653 ; restored in 1659, it was finally dissolved 
 the next year. 
 
314 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 giant of a man, through cannon-tumult and all else, — 
 on and on, till the Cause triutuphed, its once so for- 
 midable 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 sti'ongest soul of England, 
 the undisputed Hero of all England, -^ what of this ? 
 It was possible that the Law of Christ's Gospel could 
 now establish itself in the world ! The Theocracy 
 which John Knox in his puljjit might dream of as a 
 ' devout imagination,' this jiractical man, experienced 
 in the whole chaos of most rough practice, dared to 
 consider as capable of being realised. Those that were 
 highest in Christ's Church, the devoutest wisest men, 
 were to rule the land : in some considerable degree, it 
 might be so and should be so. Was it not true, God's 
 truth ? And if true, was it not then the very thing to 
 do ? The strongest practical intellect in England dared 
 to answer, Yes ! This I call a noble true purpose ; is 
 it not, in its own dialect, the noblest that could enter 
 into the heart of Statesman or man ? For a Knox to 
 take it up was something ; but for a Cromwell, with 
 his great sound sense and experience of what our world 
 was, — History, I think, shows it oxAj this once in such 
 a degree. I account it the culminating point of Pro- 
 testantism ; the most heroic phasis that ' Faith in the 
 Bible ' was appointed to exhibit here below. Fancy it : 
 that it were made manifest to one of us, how we could 
 make the Right supremely victorious over Wrong, and 
 all that we had longed and prayed for, as the highest 
 good to England and all lands, an attainable fact ! 
 
 Well, I must say, the vulpine intellect, with its know- 
 ingness, its alertness and expertness in ' detecting 
 
THE HERO AS KING 315 
 
 hypocrites,' seems to me a rather sorry business. We 
 have had but one such Statesman in England ; one 
 man, that I can get sight of, who ever had in the 
 heart of him any such purpose at all. One man, in 
 the course of fifteen-hundred years ; and this was his 
 welcome. He had adherents by tlie hundred or the 
 ten ; opponents by the million. Had England rallied 
 all round him, — why, then, England might have been 
 a Christian land ! As it is, vulpine knowingness sits 
 yet at its hopeless problem, ' Given a world of Knaves, 
 to educe an Honesty from their united action ; ' — 
 how cumbrous a problem, you may see in Chancery ^ 
 Law-Courts, and some other places ! Till at length, 
 by Heaven's just anger, but also by Heaven's great 
 grace, the matter begins to stagnate ; and this prob- 
 lem is becoming to all men a palpably hopeless one. — 
 
 But with regard to Cromwell and his purposes : 
 Hume,^ and a multitude following him, come upon me 
 here with an admission that Cromwell was sincere at 
 first ; a sincere ' Fanatic ' at first, bixt gradually be- 
 came a ' Hypocrite ' as things opened round him. 
 This of the Fanatic-Hy]:)ocrite is Hume's theory of it ; 
 extensively applied since, — to Mahomet and many 
 others. Think of it seriously, you will find something 
 in it ; not much, not all, very far from all. Sincere 
 hei'o hearts do not sink in -this miserable manner. The 
 Sun flings-forth impurities, gets balefuUy incrusted 
 with spots ; but it does not quench itself, and become 
 no Sun at all, but a mass of Darkness ! I will venture 
 
 ^ The highest court of justice in Great Britain. 
 
 2 In Histary of England (1G54-1661). See p. 204, n. 2. 
 
316 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 to say that such never befell a great deep Cromwell ; 
 I think, never. Nature's own lion-hearted Son ; An- 
 taeus-like,^ his strength is got by touching the Earthy 
 his Mother ; lift him up from the Earth, lift him up 
 into Hypocrisy, Inanity, his strength is gone. We will 
 not assert that CromweU was an immaculate man; that 
 he fell into no faults, no insincerities among the rest. 
 He was no dilettante professor of ' perfections,' ' im- 
 maculate conducts.' He was a rugged Orson,^ rend- 
 ing his rough way through actual true v)orh, — doubt- 
 less with many a fall therein. Insincerities, faults, 
 very many faults daily and hourly : it was too well 
 known to him ; known to God and him ! The Sim 
 was dimmed many a time ; but the Sun had not him- 
 self grown a Dimness. Cromwell's last words, as he 
 lay waiting for death, are those of a Christian heroic 
 mkn. Broken prayers to God, that He would judge 
 him and this Cause, He since man could not, in justice 
 yet in pity. They are most touching words. He 
 breathed-out his wild great soul, its toils and sins aU 
 ended now, into the presence of his Maker, in this 
 manner. 
 
 I, for one, will not call the man a Hypocrite ! Hy- 
 pocrite, mummer, the life of him a mere theatricality ; 
 empty barren quack, hungry for the shouts of mobs ? 
 The man had made obscurity do very well for him 
 tiU his head was gi'ay ; and. now he %cas^ there as he 
 stood recognised unblamed, the virtual King of Eng- 
 
 ' Mythical Giant, son of Earth, who in wrestling received fresh 
 strength from every fall upon his mother. 
 
 " Carried off by a bear and bi-ought up in rough forest sav- 
 agery; bis twin brother Valentine was brought up at court. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 31T 
 
 land. Cannot a man do without King's Coaches and 
 Cloaks ? Is it such a blessedness to have clerks for- 
 ever pestering you with bundles of papers in red tape ? 
 A simple Diocletian ^ prefers planting of cabbages ; a 
 George Washington, no very immeasurable man, does 
 the like. One would say, it is what any genuine man 
 could do ; and would do. The instant his real work 
 were out in the matter of Kingship, — away with it ! 
 Let us remark, meanwhile, how indispensable every- 
 where a King is, in all movements of men. It is strik- 
 ingly shown, in this very War, what becomes of men 
 when they cannot find a Cliief Man, and their enemies 
 can. The Scotch Nation was all but imanimous in 
 Puritanism ; zealous and of one mind about it, as in 
 this English end of the Island was always far from 
 being the case. But there was no great CromweU 
 among them ; poor tremulous, hesitating, diplomatic 
 Argyles ^ and suchlike : none of them had a heart true 
 enough for the truth, or durst commit himself to the 
 truth. They had no leader ; and the scattered Cava- 
 lier party in that country had one : Montrose,^ the 
 noblest of all the Cavaliers ; an accomplished, gallant- 
 hearted, splendid man ; what one may call the Hero- 
 Cavalier. WeU, look at it; on the one hand subjects 
 without a King ; on the other a King without sub- 
 jects I The subjects without King can do nothing ; the 
 subjectless King can do something. This Montrose, 
 
 1 245-313; he was Emperor of Rome, but abdicated and re- 
 turned to his cabbages, — and philosophy. 
 
 ■■^ Marquis of Argyle, 1598-1661 (executed); utterly defeated 
 by Montrose in 1645. Character as stated by Carlyle. 
 
 3 Marquis of Montrose, 1612-1650 (executed). See Scott's 
 Legend of Montrose. 
 
318 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 with a handful of Irish oi- Highhind savages, few of 
 them so much as guns in their hands, dashes at the 
 drilled Puritan armies like a wild whirlwind ; sweeps 
 them, time after time, some five times over, from the 
 field before him. He was at one period, for a short 
 while, master of all Scotland. One man ; but he was 
 a man : a million zealous men, but icithovt the one ; 
 they against him were powerless ! Perhaps of all the 
 persons in that Puritan struggle, from first to last, the 
 single indispensable one was verily Cromwell. To see 
 and dare, and decide ; to be a fixed pillar in the welter 
 of uncei'tainty ; — a King among them, whether they 
 called him so or not. 
 
 Precisely here, however, lies the rub ^ for Cromwell. 
 His other proceedings have all found adVocates, and 
 stand generally justified ; but this dismissal of the 
 Rump Parliament 2 and assumption of the Protector- 
 ship, is what no one can pardon him. He had fairly 
 grown to be King in England ; Chief Man of the vic- 
 torious party in England: but it seems he could not do 
 without the King's Cloak, and sold himself to perdition 
 in order to get it. Let us see a little how this was. 
 
 England, Scotland, Ireland, all lying now subdued 
 at the feet of the Puritan Parliament, the practical 
 question arose. What was to be done with it? IIow 
 will you govern these Nations, which Providence in a 
 
 1 Obstacle, hindrance. 
 
 To sleep : perchance to dream ; ay, there 's the rub ; 
 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come. 
 
 Hamlet, iii, i, 65, 66. 
 
 2 See p. 313, n. 1. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 319 
 
 wondrous way has given-up to your disposal ? Clearly 
 those hundred surviving members of the Long Parlia- 
 ment, who sit there as supreme authority, cannot con- 
 tinue forever to sit. What is to be done ? — It was a 
 question which theoretical constitution-builders may 
 find easy to answer ; but to Cromwell, looking there 
 into the real practical facts of it, there could be none 
 more complicated. He asked of the Parliament, What 
 it was they would decide upon? It was for the Parlia- 
 ment to say. Yet the Soldiers too, however contrary 
 to Formula, they who had purchased this victory with 
 their blood, it seemed to them that they also should 
 have something to say in it ! We wiU not " For all our 
 fighting have nothing but a little piece of paper." We 
 understand that the Law of God's Gospel, to which 
 He through us has given the victory, shaU establish 
 itself, or try to establish itself, in this land ! 
 
 For three years, CromweU says, this question had 
 been sounded in the ears of the Parliament. They 
 could make no answer ; nothing but talk, talk. Per- 
 haps it lies in the nature of parliamentary bodies ; 
 perhaps no Parliament could in such case make any 
 answer but even that of talk, talk ! Nevertheless the 
 question must and shall be answered. You sixty men 
 there, becoming fast odious, even despicable, to the 
 whole nation, whom the nation already calls Rump 
 Parliament, you cannot continue to sit there : who or 
 what then is to foUow ? ' Free Parliament,' right of 
 Election, Constitutional Formulas of one sort or the 
 other, — the thing is a hungry Fact coming on us, 
 which we must answer or be devoured by it ! And who 
 are you that prate of Constitutional Formulas, rights 
 
320 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 of Parliament? You have had to kill your King, to 
 make Pride's ^ Purges, to expel and banish by the law 
 of the stronger whosoever would not let your Cause 
 prosper : there are but fifty or three-score of you left 
 there, debating in these days. Tell us what we shall do ; 
 not in the way of Formula, but of practicable Fact ! 
 
 How they did finally answer, remains obscure to this 
 day. The diligent Godwin ^ himself admits that he can- 
 not make it out. The likeliest is, that this poor Par- 
 liament still would not, and indeed could not dissolve 
 and disperse ; that when it came to the point of actu- 
 ally dispersing, they again, for the tenth or twentieth 
 time, adjourned it, — and Cromwell's patience failed 
 him. But we will take the favourablest hypothesis ever 
 started for the Parliament ; the favourablest, though I 
 believe it is not the true one, but too favourable. 
 
 According to this version : At the uttermost crisis, 
 when Cromwell and his Officers were met' on the one 
 hand, and the fifty or sixty Rump Members on the 
 other, it was suddenly told Cromwell that the Rump in 
 its despair was answering in a very singular way ; that 
 in their splenetic envious despair, to keep-out the Army 
 at least, these men were hurrying through the House a 
 kind of Reform Bill, — Parliament to be chosen by the 
 whole of England ; equable electoral division into dis- 
 tricts ; free suffrage, and the rest of it ! A very ques- 
 tionable, or indeed for thevi an unquestionable thing. 
 Reform BiU, free suffrage of Englishmen ? Why, the 
 
 ^ The colonel who carried out Commander-in-chief Fairfax's 
 orders for the "purging" of Parliament. See p. 313, ii. 1. 
 
 ^ 1756-1831; author of A History of the Commonwealth ; noted 
 for his radical views; father of Mary Shelley, the wife of the poet. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 321 
 
 Royalists themselves, silenced indeed but not extermi- 
 nated, perhaps ontnuinher us ; the great numerical ma- 
 jority of England was always indifferent to our Cause, 
 merely looked at it and submitted to it. It is in weight 
 and force, not by counting of heads, that we are the 
 majority ! And now with your Formulas and Reform 
 Bills, the whole matter, sorely won by our swords, shall 
 again launch itself to sea ; become a mere hope, and 
 likelihood, small even as a likelihood ? And it is not 
 a likelihood ; it is a certainty, which we have won, by 
 God's strength and our own right hands, and do now 
 hold here. CromweU walked down to these refractoiy 
 Members ; interrupted them in that rapid speed of their 
 Reform BiU ; — ordered them to begone, and talk there 
 no more. — Can we not forgive him ? Can we not under- 
 stand him ? John Milton, who looked on it all near at 
 hand,i could applayd him. The Reality had swept the 
 Formulas away before it. I fancy, most men who were 
 realities in England might see into the necessity of that. 
 The strong daring man, therefore, has set aU man- 
 ner of Formulas and logical superficialities against him ; 
 has dared appeal to the genuine Fact of this England, 
 Whether it will support him or not ? It is curious to 
 see how he struggles to govern in some constitutional 
 way ; find some Parliament to support him ; but can- 
 not. His first Parliament, the one they call Barebones's 
 Parliament, is, so to speak, a Convocation of the Nota- 
 bles? From all quarters of England the leading Min- 
 
 1 And was in fact Latin Secretary of the Council of State under 
 Cromwell. See add. note. 
 
 2 Council of prominent persons convoked by the King of France. 
 The last one, which Carlyle doubtless had in mind, was called 
 
322 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 isters and chief Puritan Officials nominate the men 
 most distinguished by religious reputation, influence 
 and attachment to the true Cause : these are assem- 
 bled to shape-out a plan. They sanctioned what was 
 past ; shaped as they coidd what was to come. They 
 wei'e scornfully called Barehones's Parliament: the 
 man's name, it seems, was not Barebones, but Bar- 
 bone,^ — a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their 
 work ; it was a most serious reality, — a trial on the 
 part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of 
 Christ coTild become the Law of this England. There 
 were men of sense among them, men of some qual- 
 ity ; men of deep piety I suppose the most of them 
 were. They failed, it seems, and broke-down, endeav- 
 ouring to reform the Court of Chancery! They dis- 
 solved themselves, as incompetent ; delivered-up their 
 p6wer again into the hands of the Lord General Crom- 
 well, to do with it what he liked and could. 
 
 What will he do with it ? The Lord General Crom- 
 well, ' Commander-in-chief of all the Forces raised 
 and to be raised ; ' he hereby sees himself, at this 
 unexampled juncture, as it' were the one available 
 Authority left in England, nothing between England 
 and utter Anarchy but him alone. Such is the uiT- 
 deniable Fact of his position and England's, there and 
 then. What will he do wdth it ? After deliberation, he 
 decides that he will accept it ; will formally, with pub- 
 lic solemnity, say and vow before God and men, "Yes, 
 
 by Louis XVI the year before the outbreak of the French Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 ^ Praisegod Barbone (variously spelled), a London leather 
 merchant, was a member of the so-called " Little " Parliament 
 of 1653, and lent it his memorable name. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 323 
 
 the Fact is so, and I will do the best I can with it ! " 
 Protectorship, Instrument of Government,^ — these 
 are the external forms of the thing ; worked out and 
 sanctioned as they could in the circumstances be, by 
 the Judges, by the leading Official people, ' Council of 
 Officers and Persons of interest in the Nation : ' and 
 as for the thing itself, undeniably enough, at the pass 
 matters had now come to, there was no alternative but 
 Anarchy or that. Puritan England might accept it or 
 not ; but Puritan England was, in real truth, saved 
 from suicide thereby ! — I believe the Puritan People 
 did, in an inarticulate, grumbling, yet on the whole 
 grateful and real way, accept this anomalous act of 
 Oliver's ; at least, he and they together made it good, 
 and always better to the last. But in their Parlia- 
 mentary articulate way, they had their difficulties, and 
 never knew fully what to say to it ! — 
 
 Oliver's second Parliament,^ properly his first regu- 
 lar Parliament, chosen by the rule laid-down in the 
 Instrument of Government, did assemble, and worked ; 
 — but got, before long, into bottomless questions as 
 to the Protector's right, as to ' usurpation,' and so 
 forth ; and had at the earliest legal day to be dismissed. 
 Cromwell's concluding Speech to these men is a remark- 
 able one. So likewise to his third Parliament,^ in 
 similar rebuke for their pedantries and obstinacies. 
 Most; rude, chaotic, all these Speeches are ; but most 
 earnest-looking. You would say, it was a sincere help- 
 less man ; not used to speah the great inorganic 
 
 1 A constitution drawn up by a council of Cromwell's officers^ 
 '^ September, 1654 ; dismissed in the following January. 
 ^ September, 1G5G, to February, 1658. 
 
324 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 thought of him, but to act it rather ! A helplessness 
 of utterance, in such bursting fulness of meaning. He 
 talks much about * births of Providence : ' All these 
 changes, so many victories and events, were not fore- 
 thoughts, and theatrical contrivances of men, of me or 
 of men ; it is blind blasphemers that will persist in 
 calling them so ! He insists with a heavy sulphurous 
 wrathful emphasis on this. As he well might. As if a 
 Cromwell in that dark huge game he had been playing, 
 the world wholly thrown into chaos roimd him, had 
 foreseen it all, and played it all off like a preeontrived 
 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 Prov- 
 idence,' God's finger guided us on, and we came at 
 last to clear height of victory, God's Cause triumpliant 
 ill these Nations ; and you as a Parliament could 
 assemble together, and say in what manner all this 
 could be organised^ reduced into rational feasibility 
 among the affairs of men. You were to help with your 
 wise counsel in doing that. " You have had such an 
 opportunity as no Parliament in England ever had." 
 Christ's Law, the Right and True, was to be in some 
 measure made the Law of this land. In place of that, 
 you have got into your idle pedantries, constitution- 
 alities, bottomless cavillings and questionings about 
 written laws for my coming here ; — and would send 
 the whole matter in Chaos again, because I have no 
 Notary's parclunent, but only God's voice from the 
 battle-whirlwind, for being President among you ! 
 That opportunity is gone ; and we know not when it 
 will return. You have had your constitutional Logic ; 
 
THE HERO AS KING 325 
 
 and Mammon's Law, not Christ's Law, rules yet in 
 this laud. " God be judge between you and me ! " 
 These are his final words to them : Take you your 
 constitution-formulas in your hand ; and I my mfor- 
 mal struggles, purposes, realities and acts ; and " God 
 be judge between you and me ! " — 
 
 We said above what shapeless, involved chaotic 
 things the printed Speeches of Cromwell are. Wil- 
 fully ambiguous, unintelligible, say the most : a hypo- 
 crite shrouding himself in confused Jesuitic jargon ! 
 To me they do not seem so. I will say rather, they 
 afforded the first glimpses I could ever get into the 
 reality of this Cromwell, nay into the possibility of 
 him. Try to believe that he means something, search 
 lovingly what that may be : you will find a real speech 
 lying imprisoned in these broken rude tortuous utter- 
 ances ; a meaning in the great heart of this inarticu- 
 late man ! You will, for the first time, begin to see 
 that he was a man ; not an enigmatic chimera, unintel- 
 ligible to you, incredible to you. The Histories and 
 Biographies written of this Cromwell, written in shal- 
 low sceptical generations that could not know or con- 
 ceive of a deep believing man, are far more obscure 
 than Cromwell's Speeches. You look through them 
 only into the infinite vague of Black and the Inane. 
 ' Heats and jealousies,' sa3'^s Lord Clarendon himself : 
 * heats and jealousies,' mere crabbed whims, theories 
 and crotchets ; these induced slow sober quiet English- 
 men to lay down their ploughs and work ; and fly into 
 red fury of confused war against the best-conditioned 
 of Kings ! Try if you can find that true. Scepticism 
 writing about Belief may have great gifts ; but it is 
 
326 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 really ultra vires there. It is Blindness laying-down 
 the Laws of Ojitics. — 
 
 Cromwell's third Parliament split on the same 
 rock as his second. Ever the constitutional Formula : 
 How came you there ? Show us some Notary parch- 
 ment ! Blind pedants : — " Why, surely the same 
 power which makes you a Parliament, that, and 
 something more, made me a Protector!" If my Pro- 
 tectorship is nothing, what in the name of wonder 
 is your Parliamenteership, a reflex and creation of 
 that ? — 
 
 Parliaments having failed, there remained nothing 
 but the way of Despotism. Military Dictators, each 
 with his district, to coerce the Royalist and other gain- 
 sayers, to govern them, if not by act of Parliament, 
 then by the sword. Formula shall not carry it, while 
 the Reality is here ! I will go on protecting oppressed 
 Protestants abroad, appointing just judges, wise man- 
 agers, at home, cherishing true Gospel ministers ; 
 doing the best I can to make England a Christian 
 England, greater than old Rome, the Queen of Protes- 
 tant Christianity ; I, since you will not help me ; I 
 while God leaves me life ! — Why did he not give it 
 up ; retire into obscurity again, since the Law would 
 not acknowledge him ? cry several. That is where 
 they mistake. For him there was no giving of it up ! 
 Prime Ministers have governed countries, Pitt, Pom- 
 bal,i Choiseul ; ^ and their word was a law while it 
 held: but this Prime Minister was one that covld not 
 get resigned. Let him once resign, Charles Stuart 
 
 ^ Portuguese statesman (1G99-1782). 
 2 French statesman (1719-1785). 
 
THE HERO AS KING 327 
 
 and the Cavaliers ^ waited to kill him ; to kill the 
 Cause and him. Once embarked, there is no retreat, 
 no return. This Prime Minister could retire no-whi- 
 ther except into his tomb. 
 
 One is sorry for Cromwell in his old days. His 
 complaint is incessant of the heavy burden Providence 
 has laid on him. Heavy ; which he must bear till death. 
 Old Colonel Hutchinson,^ as his wife relates it, Hutch- 
 inson, his old battle-mate, coming to see him on some 
 indispensable business, much against his will, — Crom- 
 well ' follows him to the door,' in a most fraternal, 
 domestic, conciliatory style : begs that he would be 
 reconciled to him, his old brother in arms ; says how 
 much it grieves him to be misunderstood, desei'ted by 
 true fellow-soldiers, dear to him from of old : the rig- 
 orous Hutchinson, cased in his Republican formula,^ 
 sullenly goes his way. — And the man's head now 
 white ; his strong arm growing weary with its long 
 work ! I think always too of his poor Mother, now 
 very old, living in that Palace of his ; a right brave 
 woman ; as indeed they lived all an honest God-fear- 
 ing Household there : if she heard a shot go-off, she 
 thought it was her son killed. He had to come to her 
 at least once a day, that she might see with her own 
 
 eyes that he was yet living. The poor old Mother ! 
 
 What had this man gained ; what had he gained ? 
 He had a life of sore strife and toil, to his last day.* 
 
 ^ Partisans of Charles ; the partisans of Puritanism were 
 called Roundheads. 
 
 ^ 1616-1664 ; one of the Regicides. 
 
 * /. e., having scruples against one-man rule. 
 
 * Cromwell, worn out under the strain, died of a fever, 
 September 3, 1658, and was buried in Henry VII's Chapel iu 
 
328 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 ! Peace to him. 
 Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us ? 
 We walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life ; 
 step-over his body sunk in the ditch there. We need 
 not sjmrn it, as we step on it ! — Let the Hero rest. 
 It was not to men's judgment that he appealed ; nor 
 have men judged him very well. 
 
 Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritan- 
 ism had got itself hushed-up into decent composure, 
 and its results made smooth, in 1688,^ there broke- 
 out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to 
 hush -up, known to all mortals, and like to be long 
 known, by the name of French Revolution. It is pro])- 
 erly the third and final act of Protestantism ; the 
 explosive confused return of mankind to Reality and 
 Fact, now that they were perishing of Semblance and 
 Sham. We call our English Puritanism the second 
 act : " Well then, the Bible is true ; let us go by the 
 Bible ! " " In Church," said Luther ; " In Church and 
 
 Westminster Abbey, among tbe kings of England. His body was 
 exhumed, January, 1G61, and hanged on the gallows at Tyburn, 
 the place of criminal execution. It was afterwards beheaded, 
 and the head set upon a pole on top of Westminster Hall. See 
 C. Collins, " What became of Cromwell ? " in Gentleman's Mag- 
 azine, 1881. 
 
 1 See p. 204, n. 4; 205, n. 2. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 329 
 
 State," said Cromwell, " let us go by what actually is 
 God's Truth." Men have to return to reality ; they 
 cannot live on semblance. The French Revolution, or 
 third act, we may well call the final one ; for lower 
 than that savage Sanscvlottism ^ men cannot go. They 
 stand there on the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable 
 in all seasons and circumstances ; and may and must 
 begin again confidently to build-up from that. The 
 French explosion, like the English one, got its King, 
 — who had no Notary parchment to show for himself. 
 We have still to glance for a moment at Napoleon, 
 our second modern King. 
 
 Napoleon does by no means seem to me so great a 
 man as Cromwell. His enormous victories which 
 reached over all Europe, while Cromwell abode mainly 
 in our little England, are but as the high stilts on 
 which the man is seen standing ; the stature of the 
 man is not altered thereby. I find in him no such 
 sincerity as in Cromwell ; only a far inferior sort. 
 No silent walking, through long years, with the Awful 
 Unnamable of this Universe ; ' walking with God,' as 
 he called it ; and faith and strength in that alone : 
 latent thought and valour, content to lie latent, then 
 burst out as in blaze of Heaven's lightning ! Napoleon 
 lived in an age when God was no longer believed ; 
 the meaning of all Silence, Latency, was thought to 
 be Nonentity : he had to begin not out of the Puritan 
 Bible, but out of poor Sceptical Encydopedies? This 
 was the length the man carried it. Meritorious to 
 get so far. His compact, prompt, evei-yway articulate 
 
 1 See p. 275, ii. 1. 
 
 2 See p. 20, u. 2. 
 
330 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 character is in itself perhaps small, compared with 
 our great chaotic /particulate Cromwell's. Instead of 
 ' dumb Prophet struggling to speak,' we have a 
 poi-tentous mixture of the Quack withal ! Hume's 
 notion of the Fanatic-Hypocrite, with such truth as it 
 has, will apply much better to Napoleon than it did to 
 Cromwell, to Mahomet or the like, — where indeed 
 taken strictly it has hardly any truth at all. An ele- 
 ment 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 
 li6s. It had been, in the long-run, better for Napoleon 
 too if he had not told any. In fact, if a man have 
 any purpose reaching beyond the hour and day, meant 
 to be found extant next day, what good can it ever 
 be to promulgate lies ? The lies are found-out ; ruin- 
 ous 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 7io-thing ; you cannot of 
 nothing make something ; you make nothing at last, 
 and lose your labour into the bargain. 
 
 Yet Napoleon had a sincerity : we are to distin- 
 guish between what is superficial and what is funda- 
 mental in insincerity. Across these outer manoeuver- 
 ings and quackeries of his, which were many and most 
 blamable, let us discern withal that the man had a 
 
THE HERO AS KING 331 
 
 certain instinctive ineradicable feeling for reality ; 
 and did base himseK upon fact, so long as lie had any 
 basis. He has an instinct of Nature better than his 
 culture was. His savans,^ Bourrienne^ tells us, in 
 that voyage to Egyjit,^ were one evening busily occu- 
 pied arguing that there could be no God. They had 
 proved it, to their satisfaction, by all manner of logic. 
 Napoleon looking up into the stars, answers, "Very 
 ingenious, Messieurs : but who made all that ? " The 
 Atheistic logic runs-off from him like water ; the great 
 Fact stares him in the face : " Who made all that ? " 
 So too in Practice : he, as every man that can be 
 great, or have victory in this world, sees, through all 
 entanglements, the practical heart of the matter ; 
 drives straight towards that. When the steward of 
 his Tuileries* Palace was exhibiting the new uphol- 
 stery, with praises, and demonstration how glorious it 
 was, and how cheap withal. Napoleon, making little 
 answer, asked for a pair of scissors, dipt one of the 
 gold tassels from a window-curtain, put it in his 
 pocket, and walked on. Some days afterwards, he 
 produced it at the right moment, to the horror of his 
 upholstery functionary ; it was not gold but tinsel ! 
 In Saint Helena,^ it is notable how he still, to his 
 last days, insists on the practical, the real. " Why 
 
 ^ Scholars, sages. 
 
 ^ 17G9-1834. Author of Memoires ; held various government 
 positions under Napoleon and under the restored Louis XVIII. 
 
 3 1798. 
 
 * " Tile-yards," the royal palace in Paris, destroyed by the 
 mob in 1871. 
 
 ^ Whither, after his defeat at Waterloo, June 18, 1815, he 
 was sent for the rest of his life. 
 
332 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 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 ; 
 lie is like a piece of silent strength in the middle of 
 their morbid querulousness there. 
 
 And accordingly was there not what we can call a 
 faith in him, genuine so far as it went ? That this 
 new enormous Democracy asserting itself here in the 
 French Revolution is an insuppressible Fact, which 
 the whole world, with its old forces and institutions, 
 cannot put down ; this was a true insight of his, and 
 took his conscience and enthusiasm along with it, — 
 a faith. And did he not interpret the dim purport of 
 it well ? ' La carricre oiiverte aux talens,^ The imple- 
 ments to him who can handle them : ' this actually is 
 the truth, and even the whole truth; it includes what- 
 ever the French Revolution, or any Revolution, could 
 mean. Napoleon, in his first period, was a true Demo- 
 crat. And yet by the nature of him, fostered too by his 
 military trade, he knew that Democracy, if it were a 
 true thing at all, could not be an anarchy : the man 
 had a heart-hatred for anarchy. On that Twentieth 
 of June^ (1792), Bourrienne and he sat in a coffee- 
 house, as the mob rolled by : Napoleon expresses the 
 deepest contempt for persons in authority that they 
 do not restrain this rabble. On the Tenth of August ^ 
 
 ^ Literally : The career (race-course) open to the talents. 
 
 ^ The mob invaded the Tuileries, then occupied by Louis XVI. 
 
 ^ The revolutionary mob made a more violent armed assault 
 on the palace, and massacred about 800 of the Swiss bodyguard 
 of the King. The loyalty of the Swiss is commemorated by 
 Thorwaldsen's Lion of Lucerne. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 333 
 
 he wonders why there is no man to comQiancl these 
 poor Swiss ; they woukl conquer if there were. Such 
 a faith in Democraey, yet hatred of anarchy, it is 
 that carries Napoleon through all his great work. 
 Through his brilliant Italian Campaigns, ^ onwards to 
 the Peace of Leoben,^ one wovild say, his inspiration 
 is: 'Triumph to the French Revolution; assertion of it 
 against these Austrian Simulacra that pretend to call 
 it a Simulacrum ! ' Withal, however, he feels, and has 
 a right to feel, how necessary a strong Authority is ; 
 how the Revolution cannot prosper or last without such. 
 To bridle-in that great devouring, self -devouring French 
 Revolution ; to tame it, so that its intrinsic purpose 
 can be made good, that it may become organic^ and be 
 able to live among other organisms and formed things, 
 not as a wasting destruction alone : is not this still 
 what he partly aimed at, as the true purport of his 
 life ; nay what he actually managed to do ? Through 
 Wagrams,^ Austerlitzes ; ^ triumph after triumph, — 
 he triumphed so far. There was an eye to see i« this 
 man, a soul to dare and do. He rose naturally to be 
 the King. All men saw that he was such. The com- 
 mon soldiers used to say on the march : " These bab- 
 bling Avocats^ up at Paris ; all talk and no work ! 
 What wonder it runs all wrong? We shall have to 
 go and put our Petit Caporal there ! " They went, 
 
 1 1796-1797. 
 
 ^ In Austria, 1797, between Austria and the French Republic. 
 
 3 Near Vienna, 1809. 
 
 * Seventy to eighty miles NNE of Vienna. One of Napo- 
 leon's most famous battles, in which he defeated a superior force 
 of Austrians and Russians with a loss of c. 12,000 against 30,000. 
 See p. 108. 
 
334 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 and put liini there ; tliey and France at large. Chief- 
 consulship, Emperorship, victoi-y over Europe ; — till 
 the poor Lieutenant of La Fere} not unnaturally, 
 might seem to himself the greatest of all men that 
 had been in the world for some ages. 
 
 But at this point, I think, the fatal charlatan-ele- 
 ment got the upper hand. He apostatised from his old 
 faith in Facts, took to believing in Semblances ; strove 
 to connect himself with Austrian Dynasties,^ Pope- 
 doms, with the old false Feudalities which he once saw 
 clearly to be false ; — considered that he would found 
 "his Dynasty" and so forth ; that the enormous French 
 Revolution meant only that ! The man was ' given-up 
 to strong delusion, that he should believe a lie ; ' ^ a 
 fearful but most sure thing. He did not know true 
 from false now when he looked at them, — the fearful- 
 est 'penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart. 
 Self and false ambition had now become his god : self- 
 deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow 
 naturally more and more. What a paltry 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 Pope's- Con- 
 cordat} pretending to be a re-establishment of Ca- 
 
 * A town in Aisne, northern France, which gives name to a 
 regiment of artillery. Napoleon was lieutenant in this regiment, 
 1785-1791. 
 
 ^ Napoleon divorced Josephine and married (1810) Maria 
 Louisa, daughter of the Emperor of Austria, who bore him a son, 
 " The King of Rome." 
 
 ^ And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that 
 they should believe a lie. 2 Thess. ii, 11. 
 
 * Between Napoleon and Pius VII, providing for mutual 
 official recognition, 1801. 
 
OLIVER CROMWELL 
 
 From the painting by Robert Walker in the possession of the Earl of Scaxiwich, 
 
 Hinchingbrooke, En gla nJ. 
 
 Probably painted soon after the beginning of the Civil W(rr, when Cromuell 
 
 was about forty-four years old. 
 
THE HERO AS KING ' 335 
 
 tholicism, felt by himself to be the method of extirpat- 
 ing it, '•'•la vaccine^ de la religion:'''' his ceremonial 
 Coronations, consecrations by the old Italian Chimera 
 in Notre-Dame,"2 — " wanting nothing to complete the 
 pomp of it," as Augereau ^ said, " nothing but the half- 
 niiUiou of men who had died to put an end to all that " ! 
 Cromwell's Inauguration was by the Sword and Bible ; 
 what we must call a genuinely true one. Sword and 
 Bible were borne before him, without any chimera: 
 were not these the real emblems of Puritanism; its true 
 decoration and insignia ? It had used them both in a 
 very real manner, and pretended to stand by them now! 
 But this, poor Napoleon mistook : he believed too much 
 in the Dujpeah'iUty of men ; saw no fact deeper in man 
 than Hunger and this ! He was mistaken. Like a 
 man that should build upon cloud ; his house and he faU 
 down in confused wreck, and depart oiit of the world. 
 Alas, in all of us this charlatan-element exists ; and 
 might be developed, were the temptation strong enough. 
 ' Lead us not into temptation ' ! But it is fatal, I say, 
 that it he developed. The thing into which it enters 
 as a cognisable ingredient is doomed to be altogether 
 transitory ; and, however huge it may looh^ is in itself 
 small. Napoleon's working, accordingly, what was it 
 with all the noise it made ? A flash as of gunpowder 
 wide-spread ; a blazing-up as of dry heath. For an 
 
 ^ Vaccination to secure immunity from the disease of reli- 
 gion in future. 
 
 " Cathedral in Paris, where, Decemher, 1804, Napoleon was 
 crowned Emperor in the presence of the Pope, summoned to Paris 
 for the purpose. The next spring he was crowned King of Italy 
 at Milan. 
 
 ^ One of Napoleon's generals (1757-1816). 
 
336 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 hour the whole Universe seems wrapt in smoke and 
 flame ; but only for an hour. It goes out : the Universe 
 with its old mountains and streams, its stars above and 
 kind soil beneath, is still there. 
 
 The Duke of Weimar i told his friends always. To 
 be of courage ; this Napoleonism was unjust, a false- 
 hood, and could not last. It is true doctrine. The 
 heavier this Napoleon trampled on the world, holding 
 it tyrannously dowTi, the fiercer would the world's re- 
 coil against him be, one day. Injustice pays itself with 
 frightful compound-interest. I am not sure but he had 
 better have lost his best park of artillery, or had his 
 best regiment drowned in the sea, than shot that poor 
 German Bookseller, Palm ! ^ It was a palpable tyran- 
 nous murderous injustice, which no man, let him paint 
 an inch thick, could make-out to be other. It burnt 
 deep into the hearts of men, it and the like of it ; sup- 
 pressed fire flashed in the eyes of men, as they thought 
 of it, — waiting their day ! Which day came : Ger- 
 many rose round him. — What Napoleon did will in 
 the long-run amoimt to what he did justly ; what Na- 
 ture with her laws will sanction. To what of reality 
 was in him ; to that and nothing more. The rest was 
 all smoke and waste. La carriere ouverte aux talens: 
 that great true Message, which has yet to articulate 
 and fulfil itself everywhere, he left in a most inar- 
 ticulate state. He was a great ebauche^ a rude-draught 
 
 1 Goethe's friend and patron. Goethe resided at Weimar for 
 more than fifty years; and he and Schiller are buried there. 
 
 2 Of Nuremberg; condemned and shot (1806) by Napoleon's 
 orders for selling a pamphlet criticising Napoleon and his 
 troops. 
 
 ^ Rough preliminary sketch. 
 
THE HERO AS KING 337 
 
 never completed ; as indeed what great man is other ? 
 Left in too rude a state, alas ! 
 
 His notions of the world, as he expresses them there 
 at St. Helena, are almost tragical to consider. He seems 
 to feel the most unaffected surprise that it has all gone 
 so ; that he is flung-out on the rock here, and the World 
 is stUl moving on its axis. France is great, and all- 
 great ; and at bottom, he is France. England itself, 
 he says, is by Nature only an appendage of France ; 
 "another Isle of Oleron^ to France." So it was by 
 Nature^ by Napoleon-Nature ; and yet look how in fact 
 — Here am I ! He cannot understand it : inconceiv- 
 able that the reality has not corresponded to his pro- 
 gram of it ; that France was not all-great, that he was 
 not France. ' Strong delusion,' that he should believe 
 the thing to be which is not ! The compact, clear-seeing, 
 decisive Italian nature of him, strong, genuine, which 
 he once had, has enveloped itself, half-dissolved itself, 
 in a turbid atmosphere of French fanfaronade. The 
 world was not disposed to be troddeu-down underfoot ; 
 to be bound into masses, and built together, as he 
 liked, for a pedestal to France and him : the world 
 had quite other purposes in view ! Napoleon's aston- 
 ishment is extreme. But alas, what help now? He 
 had gone that way of his ; and Nature also had gone 
 her way. Having once parted with Reality, he tum- 
 bles helpless in Vacuity ; no rescue for him. He had 
 to sink there, mournfully as man seldom did ; and 
 break his great heart, and die,^ — this poor Napoleon : 
 
 ^ Off the west coast of Frauce, between the Loire and the 
 Garonne. 
 
 2 May 5, 1821. 
 
338 LECTURES ON HEROES 
 
 a great implement too soon wasted, till it was useless : 
 our last Great' Man ! 
 
 Our last, in a double sense. For here finally these 
 wide roamings of ours through so many times and 
 places, in search and study of Pleroes, are to terminate. 
 I am sorry for it : there was pleasure for me in this 
 business, if also much pain. It is a great subject, and 
 a most grave and wide one, this which, not to be too 
 grave about it, I have named Hero-ivorship. It enters 
 deeply, as I think, into the seci*et of Mankind's waj^s 
 and vitalest interests in this world, and is well worth 
 explaining at present. With six months, instead of 
 six days, we might have done better. I promised to 
 break-ground on it ; I know not whether I have even 
 managed to do that. I have had to tear it up in the 
 rudest manner in order to get into it at all. Often 
 enough, with these abrupt utterances thrown-out iso- 
 lated, unexplained, has your tolerance been put to the 
 trial. Tolerance, patient candour, all-hoping favour 
 and kindness, which I will not speak of at present. 
 The accomplished and distinguished, the beautiful, the 
 wise, something of what is best in England, have lis- 
 tened patiently to my rude words. With many feel- 
 ings, I heartily thank you all ; and say, Good be with 
 you alll 
 
CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 
 LECTURE I 
 
 THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM : SCANDINAVIAN 
 MYTHOLOGY 
 
 Heroes: Universal History consists essentially of their united 
 Biographies. Religion not a man's church-creed, but his practi- 
 cal belief about himself and the Universe: Both with Men and 
 Nations it is the One fact about them which creatively deter- 
 mines all the rest. Heathenism: Christianity: Modern Scepti- 
 cism. The Hero as Divinity. Paganism a fact; not Quackery, 
 nor Allegory: Not to be pretentiously 'explained;' to be looked 
 at as old Thought, and with sympathy, (p. 1.) — Nature no more 
 seems divine except to the Prophet or Poet, because men have 
 ceased to think: To the Pagan Thinker, as to a child-man, all 
 was either godlike or God. Canopus: Man. Hero-worship the 
 basis of Religion, Loyalty, Society. A Hero not the ' creature 
 of the time:' Hero-worship indestructible. Johnson: Voltaire. 
 (9.) — Scandinavian Paganism the Religion of our Fathers. Ice- 
 land, the home of the Norse Poets, described. The Edda. The 
 primary characteristic of Norse Paganism, the impersonation of 
 the visible workings of Nature. Jotuns and the Gods. Fire: 
 Frost : Thunder : The Sun : Sea-Tempest. Mythus of the Crea- 
 tion: The Life-Tree Igdrasil. The modern '■Machine of the 
 Universe.' (21.) — The Norse Creed, as recorded, the summation 
 of several successive systems: Originally the shape given to the 
 national thought by their first 'Man of Genius.' Odin: He has 
 no history or date; yet was no mere adjective, but a man of 
 flesh and blood. How deified. The World of Nature, to every 
 man a Fantasy of Himself. (29.) — Odin the inventor of Runes, 
 of Letters and Poetry. His reception as a Hero: the pattern 
 Norse-Man; a God: His shadow over the whole History of his 
 People. (38.)-^ The essence of Norse Paganism not so much 
 Morality, as a sincere recognition of Nature: Sincerity better 
 
340 CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 
 
 than Gracefulness. The Allegories, the after-creations of the 
 Faith. Main practical Belief: Hall of Odin: Valkyrs: Destiny: 
 Necessity of Valour. Its worth: Their Sea-Kings, Woodcutter 
 Kings, our spiritual Progenitors. The growth of Odinism. (42.) 
 
 — The strong simplicity of Norse lore quite unrecognized by 
 Gray. Thor's veritable Norse rage: Balder, the wliite Sungod. 
 How the old Norse heart loves the Thunder-god, and sports witli 
 him. Huge Brobdingnag genius, needing only to be tanied-down, 
 into Shakspeares, Goethes. Truth in the Norse Songs: This 
 World a show. Thor's invasion of Jotunheim. The Ragnarok, 
 or Twilight of the Gods: The Old must die, that the New and 
 Better may be born. Tlior's last appearance. The Norse Creed 
 a Consecration of Valour. It and tlie whole Past a possession of 
 the Present. (47.) 
 
 LECTURE 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. 58.) — Mahomet a true Prophet; 
 uot 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. (60.) — 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 in- 
 spired men; from Job downwards. Their Holy Places. Mecca, 
 its site, history and government. (65.) — Mahomet. His youth: 
 His fond Grandfather. Had no book-learning: Travels to the 
 Syrian Fairs; and first comes in contact with the Christian 
 Religion. An altogether solid, brotherly, genuine man: A good 
 laugh, and a good flash of anger in him withal. (71.) — Marries 
 Kadijah. Begins his Prophet-career at forty years of age. Allah 
 Akhar ; God is great: Islam; we must submit to God. Do we 
 not all live in Islam? Mahomet, 'the Prophet of God.' (74.) 
 
 — The good Kadijah believes in him: Mahomet's gratitude. 
 His slow progress: Among forty of his kindred, young All alone 
 
CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 341 
 
 joined him. His good Uncle expostulates with him: Mahomet, 
 bursting into tears, persists in his mission. The Hegira. Pro- 
 pagating by the sword: First get your sword: A thing will pro- 
 pagate itself as it can. Nature a just umpire. Mahomet's Creed 
 unspeakably better than the wooden idolatries and jangling 
 Syrian Sects extirpated by it. (79.) — The Koran, the universal 
 standard of Mahometan life: An imperfeeth% badly written, 
 but genuine book: Enthusiastic extempore preaching, amid the 
 hot haste of wrestling with flesh-and-blood and spiritual enemies. 
 Its direct poetic insight. The World, Man, human Compassion; 
 all wholly miraculous to Mahomet. (88.) — His religion did not 
 succeed by ' being easy: ' None can. The sensual part of it not of 
 Mahomet's making. He himself, frugal; patched his own clothes; 
 proved a hero in rough actual trial of twenty-three years. 
 Traits of his generosity and resignation. His total freedom from 
 cant. (96.) — 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 pleasant things, not in 
 the enjoyment of them. Mahometanism a religion heartily be- 
 lieved. To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into 
 light: Arabia first became alive by means of it. (101.) 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE HERO AS POET. DANTE ; SHAKSPEARE 
 
 The Hero as Divinity or Prophet, inconsistent with the mod- 
 ern progress of science: The Hero Poet, a figure common to all 
 ages. All Heroes at bottom the same; the different sphere con- 
 stituting the grand distinction: Examples. Varieties of apti- 
 tude, (p. 107.) — Poet and Prophet meet in Vates: Their Gospel 
 the same, for the Beautiful and the Good are one. All men 
 somewhat of poets; and the highest Poets far from perfect. 
 Prose, and Poetry or musical Thought. Song a kind of inarticu- 
 late unfathomable speech: All deep things are Song. The Hero 
 as Divinity, as Prophet, and then only as Poet, no indication that 
 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. (110.) — Shakspeare and Dante, Saints of Poetry. 
 
342 CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 
 
 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: AVill 
 never return, if to plead guilty be the condition. His wander- 
 ings: 'Come e duro calle.' At the Court of Delia Scala. The 
 great soul of Dante, homeless on earth, made its home more 
 and more in Eternity. His mystic, unfathomable Song. Death: 
 Buried at Ravenna. (HC.) — His Divina Commedia a Song: Go 
 deep 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 be the two polar elements of this 
 Creation. Paganism and Christianism. (125.) — Ten silent cen- 
 turies 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. Mahomet and Dante 
 contrasted. Let a man do his work ; the fruit of it is the care of 
 Another than he. (139.) — As Dante embodies musicall}' the Inner 
 Life of the Middle Ages, so does Shakspeare embody the Outer 
 Life which grew 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 Por- 
 trait-painting. (143.) — The Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that 
 he have intellect enough, — that he be able to see. Intellect the 
 summary of all human gifts: Human intellect and vulpine in- 
 tellect contrasted. Siiakspeare's instinctive unconscious great- 
 ness : His works a part of Nature, and partaking of her in- 
 exhaustible depth. Sliakspeare greater than Dante ; in that he 
 not only sorrowed, but triumphed over his sorrows. His mirth- 
 fulness and genuine overflowing love of laughter. His Historical 
 Plays, a kind of National Epic. The Battle of Agincourt: A 
 noble Patriotism, far otlier than the ' indifference ' sometimes 
 ascribed to him. His works, like so many windows, through which 
 we see glimpses of the world that is in him. (148.) — Dante the 
 melodious Priest of Middle-Age Catholicism: Out of this 
 Shakspeare too there rises a kind of Universal Psalm, not iinfit 
 to make itself heard among still more sacred Psalms. Shaks- 
 peare an 'unconscious Prophet;' and therein greater and truer 
 
CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 343 
 
 than Mahomet. This poor Warwickshire Peasant worth more to 
 lis than a regiment of highest Dignitaries ; Indian Empire, or 
 Shakspeare, — which? An English King, whom no time or 
 chance can dethrone: A rallying-sign and bond of brotherhood 
 for all Saxondom: Wheresoever English men and women are, 
 they will say to one another, ' Yes, this Shakspeare is ours ! ' 
 (156.) 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER ; REFORMATION : 
 KNOX ; PURITANISM 
 
 The Priest a kind of Prophet; but more familiar, as the daily 
 enlightener of daily life. A trne Reformer he who appeals to 
 Heaven's invisible justice against Earth's visible force. The 
 finished Poet often a symptom that his epoch itself has reached 
 perfection, and finished. Alas, the battling Reformer, too, is at 
 times a needful and inevitable phenomenon : Offences do accumu- 
 late, till they become insupportable. Forms of Belief, modes of 
 life must perish ; yet the Good of the Past survives, an everlasting 
 possession for us all. (p. 1G2.) — Idols, or visible recognised 
 Symbols, common to all Religions: Hateful only when insincere: 
 The property of every Hero, that he come back to sincerity, to 
 reality: Protestantism and 'private judgment.' No living com- 
 munion possible among men who believe only in hearsays. The 
 Hero-Teacher, who delivers men out of darkness into light. Not 
 abolition of Hero-worship does Protestantism mean; but rather 
 a whole World of Heroes, of sincere, believing men. (169.) — 
 Luther; his obscure, seemingly-insignificant birth. His youth 
 schooled in adversity and stern reality. Becomes a Monk. His 
 religious despair: Discovers a Latin Bible: No wonder he should 
 venerate the Bible. He visits Rome. Meeti the Pope's fire by 
 fire. At the Diet of Worms: The greatest moment in the 
 modern History of men. (179.) — The Wars that followed are 
 not to be charged to the Reformation. The Old Religion once 
 true: The cry of 'No Popery' foolish enough in these days. 
 Protestantism not dead: German Literature and the French Rev- 
 olution rather considerable signs of life ! (190.) — How Luther 
 held the sovereignty of the Reformation and kept Peace while 
 he lived. His written Works: Tiieir rugged homely strength: 
 
344 CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 
 
 His dialect became the language of all writing. No mortal heart 
 to be called braver, ever lived in that Teutonic Kindred, whose 
 character is valour: Yet a most gentle heart withal, full of pity 
 and love, as the truly valiant heart ever is: Traits of character 
 from his Table-Talk : His daughter's Deathbed: The miraculous 
 in Nature. His love of Music. His Portrait. (193.) — Puritan- 
 ism the only phasis of Protestantism that ripened into a living 
 faith: Defective enough, but genuine. Its fruit in the world. 
 The sailing of the Mayflower from Delft Haven the beginning of 
 American Saxondom. In the historj' of Scotland properly but 
 one epoch of world-interest, — the Reformation by Knox: A 
 ' nation of heroes; ' a believing nation. The Puritanism of Scot- 
 laud became that of England, of New England. (200.) — Knox 
 ' guilty ' of being the bravest of all Scotchmen: Did not seek the 
 post of Prophet. At the siege of St. Andrew's Castle. Emphat- 
 ically a sincere man. A Galley-slave on the River Loire. An 
 Old-Hebrew Prophet, in the guise of an Edinburgh Minister of 
 the Sixteenth Century. (205.) — Knox and Queen Mary: 'Who 
 are you, that presume to school tlie nobles and sovereign of tliis 
 realm?' 'Madam, a subject born within the same.' His intol- 
 erance — of falsehoods and knaveries. Not a mean acrid man; 
 else he had never been virtual President and Sovereign of Scot- 
 land. His imexpected vein of drollery: A cheery social man; 
 practical, cautious, hopeful, patient. His ' devout imagination ' of 
 a Theocracy, or Government of God. Hildebrand wished a Tlieo- 
 cracy; Cromwell wished it, fought for it: Mahomet attained it. 
 In one form or other, it is the one thing to be struggled for. (209.) 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, 
 BURNS 
 
 The Hero as Man of Letters altogether a product of these 
 new ages: A Heroic Soul in very strange guise. Literary Men; 
 genuine and spurious. Fichte's 'Divine Idea of the World:' 
 His notion of the True Man of Letters. Goethe, the Pattern 
 Literary Hero. (p. 215.) — The disorganised condition of Liter- 
 ature, the summary of all other modern disorganisations. The 
 Writer of a true Book our true modern Preacher. Miraculous 
 
CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 345 
 
 influence of Books : The Hebrew Bible. Books are now our 
 actual University, our Church, our Parliament. With Books, 
 Democracy is inevitable. Thought the true thaumaturgic influ- 
 ence, by which man works all things whatsoever. (221.) — Or- 
 ganisation of the ' Literary Guild: ' Needful discipline; ' priceless 
 lessons ' of Poverty. The Literary Priesthood, and its importance 
 to society. Chinese Literary Governors. Fallen into strange 
 times; and strange things need to be speculated upon. (230.) — 
 An age of Scepticism: The very possibility of Heroism formally 
 abnegated. Benthamism an eyeless Heroism. Scepticism, Spirit- 
 ual Paralysis, Insincerity : Heroes gone-out ; Quacks come-in. 
 Our brave Chatham himself lived the strangest mimetic life all 
 along. Violent remedial revulsions: Chartisms, French Revo- 
 lutions : The Age of Scepticism passing away. Let each Man 
 look to the mending of his own Life. (236.) —Johnson one of 
 our Great English Souls. His miserable Youth and Hypochon- 
 dria: Stubborn Self-help. His loyal submission to what is really 
 higher than himself. How he stood by the old Formulas : Not 
 less original for that. Formulas; their Use and Abuse. John- 
 son's unconscious sincerity. His Twofold Gospel, a kind of Moral 
 Prudence and clear Hatred of Cant. His writings sincere and 
 full of substance. Architectural nobleness of his Dictionary. 
 Boswell, with all his faults, a true hero-worshipper of a true 
 Hero. (246.) — Rousseau a morbid, excitable, spasmodic man ; 
 intense rather than strong. Had not the invaluable • talent of 
 Silence.' His Face, expressive of his character. His Egoism : 
 Hungry for the praises of men. His books : Passionate appeals, 
 which did once more struggle towards Reality: A Prophet to his 
 Time; as he could, and as the Time could. Rosepink, and arti- 
 ficial bedizenment. Fretted, exasperated, till the heart of him 
 went mad: He could be cooped, starving, into garrets ; laughed 
 at as a maniac ; but he could not be hindered from setting the 
 world on fire. (256.) — Burns a genuine Hero, in a withered, 
 unbelieving, secondhand Century. The largest soul of all the 
 British lands, came among us in the shape of a hard-handed 
 Scottish Peasant. His heroic Father and Mother, and their 
 sore struggle through life. His rough untutored dialect : Affec- 
 tionate joyousness. His writings a poor fragment of him. His 
 conversational gifts : High duchesses and low ostlers alike fas- 
 cinated by him. (261.) — Resemblance between Burns and Mira* 
 
346 CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 
 
 beau. Official Superiors : The greatest ' thinking faculty ' in 
 this land superciliously dispensed with. Hero-woiship under 
 strange conditions. The notablest phasis of Burus's history his 
 visit to Edinburgh. For one man who can stand prosperity, there 
 are a hundred that will stand adversity. Literary Lionisui. 
 (265.) 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON : MODERN 
 REVOLUTIONISM 
 
 The King the most important of Great Men ; the summary of 
 all the various figures of Heroism. To enthrone the Ablest Man, 
 the true business of all Social procedure : The Ideal of Con- 
 stitutions. Tolerable and intolerable approximations. Divine 
 Rights and Diabolic Wrongs, (p. 272.) — The world's sad pre- 
 dicament ; that of having its Able-Man to seek, and not knowing 
 in what manner to proceed about it. The era of Modern Revolu- 
 tionism dates from Luther. The French Revolution no mere 
 act of General Insanity : Truth clad in hell-fire ; the Trump of 
 Doom to Plausibilities and empty Routine. The cry of ' Liberty 
 and Equality ' at bottom the repudiation of sham Heroes. Hero- 
 worship exists forever and everywhere: from divine adoration 
 down to the common courtesies of man and man : The soul of 
 Order, to which all things. Revolutions included, work. Some 
 Cromwell or Napoleon the necessary finish of a Sansculottism. 
 The manner in which Kings were made, and Kingship itself first 
 took rise. (277.) — Puritanism a section of the universal war of 
 Belief against Make-believe. Laud a weak ill-starred Pedant; 
 in his spasmodic vehemence heeding no voice of prudence, no 
 cry of pity. Universal necessity for true Forms: How to distin- 
 guish between True and False. The nakedest Reality preferable 
 to any empty Sembkmce, however dignified. (283.) — The work 
 of the Puritans. The Sceptical Eighteenth century, and its con- 
 stitutional estimate of Cromwell and his associates. No wish to 
 disparage such characters as Hampden, Eliot, Pym ; a most con- 
 stitutional, unblamable, dignified set of men. The rugged outcast 
 Cromwell, the man of them all in whom one still finds human 
 stuff. The One thing worth revolting for. (287.) — Cromwell's 
 • hypocrisy,' an impossible theory. His pious Life as a Farmer 
 
CARLYLE'S SUMMARY 347 
 
 until forty years of age. His public successes honest successes 
 of a brave niau. His participation in the King's death no ground 
 of condemnation. His eye for facts no hypocrite's gift. His Iron- 
 sides the embodiment of this insight of his. (293.) — Know the 
 men that may be trusted: Alas, tliis is yet, in these days, very far 
 from us. Cromwell's hypochondria : His reputed confusion of 
 speech : His habit of prayer. His speeches unpremeditated and 
 full of meaning. His reticences) called ' lying ' and ' dissimulation: ' 
 Not one falsehood proved against him. (300.) — Foolish charge 
 of 'ambition.' The great Empire of Silence: Noble silent men, 
 scattered here and there, each in his department ; silently think- 
 ing, silently hoping, silently working. Two kinds of ambition ; one 
 wholly blamable, the other laudable, inevitable : How it actually 
 was with Cromwell. (306.) — Hume's Fanatic-Hypocrite theory. 
 How indispensable everywhere a King is, in all movements of 
 men. Cromwell, as King of Puritanism, of England. Constitu- 
 tional palaver : Dismissal of the Rump Parliament. Cromwell's 
 Parliaments and Protectorship : Parliaments having failed, 
 there remained nothing for him but the way of Despotism. His 
 closing days : His poor old Mother. It was not to men's judg- 
 ments that he appealed ; nor have men judged him very well. 
 (315.) — The French Revolution, the 'third act ' of Protestant- 
 ism. Napoleon, infected with the quackeries of his age : Had a 
 kind of sincerity, — an instinct towards the prarfjcaL His faith, 
 — 'the Tools to him that can handle them,' — the whole truth of 
 Democracy. His heart-hatred of Anarchy. Finally, his quack- 
 eries got the upper hand: He would found a 'Dynasty:' Be- 
 lieved wholly in the dupeability of Men. This Napoleonism 
 was unjust, a falsehood, and could not last. (328.) 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES, COMMENTS, AND 
 SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY 
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 Heroes, Hero-Tvorship: to understand fully what C. means 
 by these words is an important part of the student's husiness 
 with the book. The simplest definition is given in the first 
 sentence. In reading, make notes of all the passages in the 
 book which contribute material toward a final full definition. 
 The subject may have been suggested to C. by a passage in 
 Hume, of whose works C. was a close student : — " The same 
 principles naturally deify mortals superior in power, cour- 
 age, or understanding, and produce hero-worship." Uni- 
 versal History: other points of view for the study of his- 
 tory ? their merits or shortcomings ? 
 Page 3 
 
 Note the positive definition of religion; emphasize "practi- 
 cally " and " mysterious." 
 
 Page 6 „ . , ^ 
 
 The comment on the truth of " Grand Laraaism is the first 
 of many passages in the book which, taken together, set forth 
 C.'s theory of government. 
 
 Page 10 , 
 
 Not only to understand, but to feel and "practically lay to 
 heart " the meaning of this page and the next two is to be 
 in sympathy with C. in one of his most characteristic and 
 fundamental teachings about life. Compare pp. 217, 218, 
 and add. note. Read in this connection his "stupendous Sec- 
 tion" on "Natural Supernaturalism," S. R.^ Ill, viii; see 
 also I, viii. 
 
 Page 11 
 
 ' There . . . rot ? ' C. often, as here, quotes or adapts 
 from his own writings: "The withered leaf is not dead 
 and lost; there are Forces in it and around it, though work- 
 ino" in inverse order ; else how could it rot ? " S. R. I, xi. 
 if such . . . possible : full meaning of this clause ? 
 
 Page 13 
 
 With the first paragraph compare Tennyson's The Higher 
 Pantheism, beginning: — 
 
 I Sartor Resartus. 
 
350 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 "The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills iiiid the plains, — 
 Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Uiin who leigus? " 
 
 And also his 
 
 " Flower in the crannied wall, 
 I pluck you out of the crannies, 
 Hold you liere, root and all, in my hand. 
 Little (lower — but if I could understand 
 What yuu are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 'a ■windo'w . . . itself :"" Rightly viewed no meanest 
 ohject is insignificiint ; all ohjects lue as windows, throufjh 
 which the philosopliic eye looks into Iiitinitiide itself." S. R. 
 I, xi. The mystery. . . "I ":" Tliere come seasons, medi- 
 tative, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you 
 ask yourself that unanswerable question: Who am /y the 
 thing that can say " I " . . . the sigiit reaches forth into 
 the void Deep, and you are alone with the Universe, and 
 silently commune with it as one mysterious Presence with 
 another . . . Sure enough, I am; and lately was not: but 
 Whence? How? Whereto? The answer lies around, written 
 in all colours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and 
 wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious Na- 
 ture : but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom that 
 God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate meaning ? " 
 ^'. R. I, viii. 
 
 Page 15 
 
 deepest root : not " earliest." greatest of all Heroes : 
 note C.'s expression of reverence here and elsewhere. 
 Compare " Look on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, and his Life, and his Biography, and what followed 
 therefrom. Higher has the human thought not yet reached: 
 . . . whose significance will ever demand to be anew in- 
 quired into, and anew made manifest.". S. R. Ill, iii. 
 
 Page 16 
 
 Society . . . Worship of Heroes : state fully to your- 
 self, with concrete illustration, the meaning of this sentence. 
 The thought recurs constantly in the following pages. 
 
 Page 21 
 
 In that strange island : a striking example of C.'s vivid 
 word-painting. To feel by contrast tlie peculiar quality of 
 Carlyle, read the finely detailed descriptions in Tennyson's 
 Lancelot and Elaine. For other exaniplesof C.'s descriptive 
 work see near the beginnings of chaps, vi and ix of S. R. II. 
 
 Page 24 
 
 split in the glance : what phenomenon does this really 
 have reference to ? 
 
 Page 25 
 
 Wish: take note of the rest of this pnragraph. C. recurs 
 to the thought frequently. Higher considerations : the 
 doctrine of "The Everlasting Yea" in S. R. II, ix. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 351 
 
 Page 29 ^ ^ ,.^ . 
 
 What he says : the thought of pp. 17, 18 from a difierent 
 point of view. 
 
 Page 31 
 
 Councils . . . Dantes, Luthers : this pluralizing of proper 
 names is a favorite device with C. for achieving greater vi- 
 vidness and concreteuess of expression. 
 
 Page 34 
 
 How the man: the paragraph is worth dwelling upon, 
 both for its thought and for its style with the fine burst of 
 poetical enthusiasm at the end. 
 
 Page 37 
 
 The world . . . ' Image of his own Dream : ' consider, 
 for concrete example, how different an impression of any- 
 common object one gets through a microscope from that 
 which he receives from looking with his unaided eye ; or 
 how different would be the impressions of an autumn land- 
 scape seen by an artist and by a color-blind man at the same 
 moment : and then consider how little we can know of what 
 the world really is, as compared with the knowledge possi- 
 ble to a being of infinitely powerful and infinitely delicate 
 senses. Compare S. R. I, viii : " So that this so solid-seem- 
 ly ing world, after all, were but an air-image, our Me the only 
 reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold production and 
 destruction, but the reflex of our own inward Force, the 
 « phantasy of our Dream ; ' or what, the Earth-Spirit in 
 Faust names it, the living visible Garment of God." See, also, 
 below, add. note to p. 217, "Transcendental philosophy." 
 
 Page 44 
 
 true to this hour: compare pp. 41 and 57. 
 
 Page 45 
 
 No Homer : compare Horace, Odes IV, ix, " Many mighty 
 men lived before Agamemnon; but they all are overwhelmed 
 in the long night, unwept and unknown, for want of a sacred 
 bard." 
 
 Page 47 
 
 Gray's fragments : Prof. Kittredge (Phelps's Selections 
 from Gray [Giun & Co.], xli-1) points out tliat Gray's en- 
 thusiasm for Scandinavian study was not accompanied with 
 any real scholarly knowledge of the original sources. A few 
 stanzas from The Fatal Sisters follow (the Valkyrs sing) : — 
 «' Glitt'ring lances are the loom, " Ere the niddy sun be set, 
 
 Where the dusky warp we strain, Pikes must shiver, javelins sing, 
 
 Weaving many a Soldier's doom. Blade with clattering buckler meet, 
 
 Orkney's woe, and Randver's bane. Hauberk crash, and helmet ring. 
 
 " See the griesly texture grow, 
 ('T is of human entrails made,) " Sisters, hence with spurs of speed : 
 And the weights, that play below. Each her thundering f aulchion wield ; 
 Each a gasping Warriour's head. Each bestride her sable steed. 
 Hurry, hurry to the field." 
 
352 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 Pope . . . Homer: see Matthew Arnold's On Translating 
 Homer. 
 
 Page 49 
 
 Thor . . . Thialfi : compare King Lear, II, iv, 68, 69, 
 " We 'II set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there 's 
 no laboring i' the winter." 
 
 Page 50 
 
 Hamlet : see notes on sources of the plot in any good edi- 
 tion of Hamlet. 
 
 Page 51 
 
 this •world . . . but a shew: compare p. 37. 
 
 Page 54 
 
 la'VB' of mutation: compare the expression of this thought 
 in the "Messianic Prophecies" of the Old Testament, in the 
 description of the Judgment in Matt, xxv; in 1 Cor. xv; 
 and in the last book of the New Testament. 
 
 Page 55 
 
 the last my thus of . . . Thor: note how fittingly this 
 story closes C.'s appeal for the recognition and appreciation 
 of the best elements of " old Norse thought." See above, 
 note to p. 44. 
 
 The day after this lecture was delivered C. wrote to his 
 mother : *' First lecture over. I thought I should get some-^ 
 thing like the tenth part of my meaning unfolded to the 
 good people, and I could not feel that I had got much more. 
 However, they seemed content; sate silent, listening as if it 
 had been gospel. I strive not to heed my own notion of tlie 
 thing, to keep down the conceit and ambition of me, for that is 
 it. I was not in good tune, I had awoke at 4^." 
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 Page 59 
 
 For at bottom . . . one stufif: a fundamental principle 
 of C.'s Hero-doctrine ; amplified statement of it on pp. 108, 
 109; also on p. 162. 
 
 Page 60 
 
 hundred-and-eighty millions : now increased by upwards 
 of thirteen-and-a-half millions more. (^Encycl. of Missions.) 
 
 Page 62 
 
 sincerity . . . the first characteristic : this being C.'s 
 " primary definition of a Great Man," it is of the utmost 
 importance to note carefully all the passages that throw light 
 on what Carlyle means by " sincerity." See the very im- 
 portant comments on this point on p. 217. 
 
 Page 63 
 
 'inspiration . . . understanding:' Jobxxxii, 8: But there 
 is a spirit in man: and the inspiration, etc. Other Bible 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 353 
 
 verses laid under tribute by C. in the remaining pages of this 
 one lecture are given all together here (notice, in reading, 
 the places where they appear) by way of emphasizing an im- 
 portant characteristic of C.'s style, resulting from his home 
 training : Acts xiii, 22 : I have found David the son of 
 Jesse, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my 
 will. Jer. X, 23: O Lord, I know that the way of man is 
 not in himself : it is not in man that walketh to direct his 
 steps. Job xxxix, 19 : Hast thou given the horse strength ? 
 hast thou clothed his neck with thunder ? xli, 29 : Darts 
 are counted as stubble : he langheth at the shaking of a 
 spear. ( Said of the leviathan, not the horse as C. remembers 
 it.) 1 Kings xix, 11, 12 : And a great and strong wind rent 
 the mountains . . . but the Lord was not in the wind : and 
 after the wind an earthquake ; but the Lord was not in the 
 earthquake : And after the earthquake a fire ; but the Lord was 
 not in the fire : and after the fire a still small voice. Gal. i, 
 15, 16 : But when it pleased God ... To reveal his Son in 
 me . . . immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood. 
 Job xiii, 15: Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. 
 Job i, 20, 21: Then Job arose, and rent his mantle. . . . And 
 said. Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked 
 shall I return thither : the Lord gave, and the Lord hath 
 taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. See also 
 p. 68, n. 3. 
 
 Page 70 
 
 most important Event : compare above, note to p. 15. 
 
 Page 76 
 
 A Hero . . . looks through the shows of things : 
 another definition of the sincere man. 
 
 Page 77 
 
 transitory garment: try to state just what C. means by 
 this. 
 
 Page 78 
 
 highest ■wisdom ... to submit to Necessity : com- 
 pare this with C.'s comment on the Norse " Destiny inex- 
 orable " (pp. 43, 44), and note its bearing on the idea of the 
 god Wish (p. 25). 
 
 Page 84 
 
 first get your sword: meaning? 
 
 Page 85 
 
 Nature . . . umpire . . . can do no wrong : this doc- 
 trine, that in the long run might and right are the same, 
 has been a rock of offense to many readers; the abuses of the 
 principle are of course obvious. The idea reappears con- 
 stantly in Heroes and in C.'s other books; it is worth while 
 to stop and consider just exactly what he means by it. 
 
354 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 Page 95 
 
 material ■world . . . Nothing : compare p. 51, and add. 
 note to p. 217. 
 
 Page 97 
 
 Not happiness: " There is in man a Higher than Love of 
 Happiness: he can do without Happiness and instead thereof 
 find Blessedness. . . . Love not Pleasure; love God; This 
 is the Everlasting Yea." S. R. II, ix. 
 
 Page 98 
 
 last -words: Muir {Life of M.') describes the scene: " 'Lord, 
 grant me pardon ; and join me to the companionship on 
 high.' Then at intervals : ' Eternity in Paradise ! ' ' Pardon ! ' 
 * The blessed companionship on high ! ' He stretched him- 
 self gently. Then all was still. His head grew heavy on 
 the bosom of Ayesha. The prophet of Arabia was no 
 more." 
 
 Page 103 
 
 the Infinite Nature of Duty: compare S. R. II, vii : 
 " Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Pro- 
 fit-and-Loss Philosophies with the sick ophthalmia and hal- 
 lucination they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of 
 Duty still dimly present to me." 
 
 Pages 103, 104 
 
 What is the chief end . . . not Mahomet: there were 
 few, if any, things under the sun for which C. entertained 
 so energetic a hatred as for the utilitarian " Profit-and-Loss " 
 philosophy. He had already delivered himself on this sub- 
 ject in S. R. Ill, iii : " Man is by birth somewhat of an owl. 
 Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed him, the 
 most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actually exist- 
 ing Motive-Millwrights ... to fancy himself a dead Iron- 
 Balance for weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved 
 for this his latter era. There stands he, his Universe one 
 huge Manger, filled with hay and thistles to be weighed 
 against each other ; and looks long-eared enough. . . . And 
 now the genius of Mechanism smothers him worse than any 
 nightmare did ; till the Soul is nigh choked out of him, and 
 only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic life remains." 
 
 " Perhaps the most energetic expression of his ideal of 
 disinterested duty is the onslaught on Benthamism in ' Hero 
 Worship,' which, as Carlyle pi-onounced the word ' beggar- 
 lier,' brought Mill to his feet with an empiiatic No ! " — 
 Richard Garnett's Thomas Carlyle, p. 171. See also earlier 
 in the present lecture, p. 78, and later, pp. 239, 240. 
 
 The day after tlie lecture Carlyle wrote to his mother : 
 " I gave them to know that the poor Arab had points about 
 him which it were good for all of them to imitate; that 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 355 
 
 probably they were more of quacks than he ; that, in short, 
 it was altogether a new kind of thing they were hearing 
 to-day." 
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 Vage 109 
 
 there are aptitudes : note the qualification of the state- 
 ment of the previous paragraph, " that the Hero can be 
 Poet," etc. 
 
 Page 110 
 
 all Appearance . . . the vesture: the various brief ex- 
 positious of C.'s transcendental philosophy scattered through 
 Heroes are worth careful attention. 
 
 Page 112 
 
 "We are all poets : compare C.'s Essay on Burns (R. L. S. 
 No. 105), pp. 28, 29 : " The feelings, the gifts that exist in 
 the Poet, are those that exist, with more or less development, 
 in every human soul: the imagination which shudders at the 
 Hell of Dante, is the same faculty, weaker in degree, which 
 called that picture into being. How does the Poet speak to 
 men, with power, but by being still more a man than they?" 
 
 Page 115 
 
 notions of God . . . higher: "An honest God's the no- 
 blest work of man," says the parodist. 
 
 Page 117 
 
 Portrait : this description and that of the portrait of Luther 
 are striking examples of C.'s graphic power. They are also 
 characteristic of his love of the concrete as an aid to making 
 real his ideas. He had a screen in his library on which he 
 posted portraits of the various heroes, ancient and modern, 
 that he could get pictures of. Holman Hunt reports an in- 
 teresting conversation in which, in the course of very unfav- 
 orable comment on Hunt's picture, The Light of the World, 
 Carlyle told him : " I am only a poor man, but I can say in 
 serious truth that I 'd thankfully give one third of all the 
 little store of money saved for my wife and old age, for a 
 veritable contemporary representation of Jesus Christ, show- 
 ing Him as He walked about, wliile he was trying with his 
 ever invincible soul to break down the obtuse stupidity of 
 the cormorant-minded, bloated gang who were doing, in des- 
 perate contention, their utmost to make the world go devil- 
 ward with themselves." Pre-Raphaelitism and the Pre-Raph- 
 aelite Brotherhood, I, 355 £f. The portrait of Dante, repro- 
 duced in the present volume opposite p. 118, was discovered 
 July 21, 1840, more than two months after the delivery of 
 this lecture, on a wall in the Palace of the Podestk in Flor- 
 
356 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 ence. It had been covered over with plaster for about two 
 centuries and was almost lost even to memory. The story 
 of its discovery is told by Professor Norton in a Note on 
 the Portraits of Dante (reprinted in Dinsmore's Aids to the 
 Study of Dante, pp. 149-154). In spite of the denials of 
 some critics it seems practically certain that this is the 
 portrait by Giotto, tradition of which had long existed. It 
 represents, of course, the young Dante of the Vita Nuova, 
 not the stern exile described by Carlyle. In the course of 
 the Note above-mentioned Professor Norton describes the 
 Dante death-mask: "The face is one of the most pathetic 
 upon which human eyes ever looked. . . . Strength is the 
 most striking attribute of the countenance. . . . The look 
 is grave and stern almost to grimness ; there is a scornful 
 lift of the eyebrow, and a contraction of the forehead as 
 from painful thought ; but obscured under this look, yet not 
 lost, are the marks of tenderness, refinement and self-mas- 
 tery, which in combination with the more obvious character- 
 istics, give to the countenance of the dead poet an ineffable 
 dignity and melancholy." Two views of the death-mask are 
 given by Dinsmore, pp. 156, 158. See also Lowell's On a 
 Portrait of Dante, i)y Giotto. 
 
 Page 124 
 
 made me lean : why, then, did he write it? See p. 311, last 
 half. 
 
 Page 126 
 
 terza rima : " I, the writer, heard Dante say that never a 
 rhyme had led him to say other than he would, but that 
 many a time and oft he had made words say in his rhymes 
 what they were not wont to express for other poets." L' at- 
 timo Commento, Longfellow's Inferno : Illustrations. 
 
 Page 127 
 
 people of Verona : see Dante at Verona, in Collected Works 
 of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, I. (London, 1897.) He narrates 
 also the " like to like " story. 
 
 Page 133 
 
 so Dante discerned: so also did Shakespeare, and ex- 
 pressed it supremely in King Lear. 
 
 Page 138 
 
 incompatibility absolute and infinite : compare p. 103. 
 
 Page 140 
 
 the one sole secret : compare p. 90. 
 
 Page 142 
 
 empire of Silence: meaning? 
 
 Page 146 
 
 best judgment ... of Europe : "The first page of Shake- 
 speare that I read," said Goethe, " made me his for life ; 
 
* ADDITIONAL NOTES 357 
 
 and when I had finished a single play I stood like one born 
 blind, on whom'a miraculous hand bestows sight in a mo- 
 ment." 
 Page 151 
 
 without morality ... could not know anything at 
 all : it is of tbe first importance to understand the sense in 
 which C. uses the words morality and intellect. The former 
 does not mean perfection, freedom from defect. " What we 
 call pure or impure, is not witb [Nature] the final question. 
 Not bow much cbafF is in you ; but whether you have any 
 wheat." See the whole paragraph : " On the whole, we make 
 too much of faults," p. 64 ; and " We will not assert that 
 Cromwell was an immaculate man," p. 316. Note too that 
 intellect does not mean cleverness, knack, or skill in doing 
 
 — even conspicuously well — anything. " The seeing eye ! 
 It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things ; what 
 Nature meant . . ." By way of illustration of the sentence 
 under discussion, try to enumerate the moral qualities which 
 the scholar, the scientist, tbe explorer, must possess that he 
 may come to know anything worth telling to the world. 
 
 Page 153 
 
 Sonnets : " With this key Sbakspeare unlocked his heart." 
 
 — Wordsworth. "The less Sbakspeare he." — Browning. 
 For the autobiographical significance of the Sonnets see 
 Sidney Lee, A Life of William Shakespeare, chaps, vii, viii, 
 and X. sat like a bird on the bough ; and sang forth : 
 see Milton, On Shakspeare : — 
 
 " For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring Art, 
 Thy easy numbers flow," 
 
 and U Allegro : — 
 
 " Or sweetest Shakspeare, Fancy's child, 
 Warble his native wood notes wild." 
 
 Page 156 
 
 No man works save under conditions : suggest pas- 
 sages or characteristics of tbe plays that give evidence of 
 the truth of this statement as applied to Shakespeare. 
 
 Page 161 
 
 he cannot yet speak : modern Russian literature was just 
 getting on its feet as Carlyle was establishing himself in 
 London. The first of tbe modern poets, Pushkin, died in 
 1838, at tbe age of thirty-nine (see translations by N. H. 
 Dole mPoet Lore, 1889-1891); and Lermontov, his greatest 
 successor, died in 1841, at the age of twenty-seven. Such 
 work as that of Tolstoi, Turgenev, and " K. R." suggests 
 that it is hardly appropriate any longer to call Russia " a 
 great dumb monster." 
 
358 ADDITIONAL NOTES ' 
 
 LECTURE IV 
 
 Page 166 
 
 as handled : note the modif ving phrase, aud " the fact it- 
 self seems certain enough." See C.'s handling of the idea ia 
 S. R. Ill, vii (" Organic Filaments "). 
 
 Page 168 
 
 Tvhat a melancholy notion: compare pp. 41, 44, and 57. 
 
 Page 172 
 
 Sincere-Cant: just the meaning? It is the property of 
 every Hero : another definition of sincerity. 
 
 Page 174 
 
 Dante had not put-out his eyes : Dante's " Liberty of 
 private judgment" enabled. him to place several popes in 
 Hell, and to predict the arrival there later of the one then 
 reigning. 
 
 Page 178 
 
 If Hero mean : the closing sentences of this paragraph 
 comprise a summary of the ethical appeal of the book- 
 
 Page i91 
 
 The cry of ' No Popery : ' provoked by the Oxford, or 
 Tractarian, Movement, also called the Anglo-Catholic Re- 
 vival, then at its height, for the defense of the English 
 Church against spiritual lethargy, and political and ecclesias- 
 tical liberalism. The year after the Lectures on Heroes, New- 
 man, then an Anglican clergyman, afterwards a cardinal of 
 the Roman Catholic Church, of whom Carlyle said that he 
 had " the brains of a good-sized rabbit," wrote the famous 
 Tract No. 90, contending that the articles of the English 
 Church were not essentially at variance with the doctrines 
 of Rome. 
 
 Pages 192, 193 
 
 Popery can build . . . Tvelcome to do so . . . Let it 
 last as long as it can : with the thought of this paragraph 
 compare pp. 84, So, and 169, " Are not all true men," etc. 
 Tolerance, even the rather patronizing variety here exhib- 
 ited, was not C.'s usual attitude on this subject. See also 
 pp. 194 and 210 ; and P. and P.^ II, xv, end. 
 
 Page 194 
 
 A rugged honesty, etc. : this character sketch of Luther 
 would not do ill for C. himself. 
 
 Page 197 
 
 Islam is all : various reminders of Mahomet in this lecture 
 recall to ns C.'s definition of the priest as "the Prophet 
 shorn of his more awful splendour." 
 
 Page 204 
 
 too true -wrhat we said, That many men : was this just 
 • what C. said ? See p. 168. 
 
 1 Past and Present. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 359 
 
 Page 206 
 
 obscure . . . age of forty: compare Mahomet aud Crom- 
 well, pp. 74 and 296. 
 
 Page 207 
 
 'burst ixito tears : ' compare Mahomet, p. 82. 
 
 Page 211 
 
 a kind of . . . Presidency and Sovereignty: this is 
 true ill a sense of all of C.'s lieroes: compare p. 20 and else- 
 where, concerniuo: the " hidestructibility of Hero-worship." 
 a true eye for the ridiculous : a point that C. would not 
 miss. 
 
 Page 214 
 
 Let them introduce : another " might and right " passage. 
 
 LECTURE V 
 
 Page 215 
 
 Johnson, Rousseau, Burns : it would have been interest- 
 ing to hear the remarks of these three men, assembled to- 
 gether and confronted with one another as types of the 
 Hero-Man-of-Letters. " Necessity makes strange bed-fel- 
 lows." " The common point of resemblance is in their being 
 sincere men : defined sincerity as the earnest living belief 
 in what you profess to believe in." C. Fox's Journa/s,^ p. 96. 
 endeavouring to speak-forth : notice that this definition 
 does not include Dante or Chaucer or Shakespeare. Milton 
 could n't have " found subsistence " for long on the paltry 
 sum paid him for Paradise Lost. Dick Steele (Tatler, 1709- 
 1711) was one of the earliest authors that won any success 
 in an attempt to eke out an insufficient income by the help 
 of the printing-press. 
 
 Page 217 
 
 inspired . . . 'originality,' 'sincerity,' 'genius:' what 
 other terms has C. used in these lectures for the same 
 quality ? Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the rest of 
 this paragraph. C.'s Hero, it seems, must, like C. himself, 
 hold the Transcendental Philosophy expounded in the next 
 paragraph. Compare p. 51. Transcendental : "Ascending 
 beyond the senses." " To a Transcendentalist, Matter has 
 an existence, but only as a Phenomenon: were we not there, 
 neither would it be there ; it is a mere Relation, or rather 
 the result of a Relation between our living Souls and the 
 great First Cause ; and depends for its apparent qualities 
 on our bodily and mental organs ; having itself 7io intrinsic 
 qualities ; being, in the common sense of that word, No- 
 
 1 Memories of Old Friends . . . from the Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox, 
 Londou, 1882. 
 
360 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 thing. The tree is green and hard, not of its own natural 
 virtue, but simply because my eye and my hand are fash- 
 ioned so as to discern such and such appearances under 
 such and such conditions. . . . Bring a sentient Being with 
 eyes a little different, with fingers ten times harder than 
 mine and to him that Thing which I call Tree shall be 
 yellow and soft, as truly as to me it is green and hard. 
 Form his Nervous-structure in all points the reverse of mine, 
 and this same Tree . . . shall simply liave all properties 
 exactly the reverse of those I attribute to it. There is, in 
 fact, says Fichte, no Tree there; but only a Manifestation 
 of Power from something which is not I. The same is true 
 of material Nature at large ... all are Impressions pro- 
 duced on me by something different from me. . . . Time 
 and Space themselves are not external but internal entities: 
 they have no outward existence; there is no Time and Space 
 out of the mind." C.'s Essay on Novalis, 
 
 Page 218 
 
 a perpetual Priesthood : the comparison reminds one of 
 the discussion of Vates, pp. 110 ff. One might go farther, 
 and point out that the god Odin as handled by C. is the 
 " camera-obscura image" of his ideal king. Compare pp. 
 275, 276, and add. note. 
 
 Page 220 
 
 Our chosen specimen . . . Goethe : " And knowest thou 
 no Prophet, even in the vesture, environment, and dialect 
 of this age ? None to whom the God-like had revealed it- 
 self . . . in whose inspired melody, even in these rag-gath- 
 ering and rag-burning days, Man's Life again begins, were 
 it but afar off, to be divine ? Knowest thon none such ? I 
 know him, and name him — Goethe." S. R. Ill, vii. such 
 is the general state of knowledge. . . . Speak aa 
 I might : granted that such was the state of knowledge 
 also about Odin or Mahomet, the very fullness of Carlyle's 
 knowledge and hero-worship of Goethe made the task of 
 interpreting him to liis hearers seem more difficult than in 
 the case of the others. C. evidently felt that Goethe's prac- 
 tical philosophy of life was very unlike that of the average 
 of an English audience : see Goethe's saying " which has 
 staggered several," p. 112. Though C. had written abun- 
 dantly of Goethe he could hardly take for granted his hear- 
 ers' familiarity with the Goethe Essays as he could their 
 acquaintance with his Burns. 
 
 Page 221 
 
 fashioning a path : how is this truer as said of the literary 
 man than in the case of the lawyer, minister, or physician ? 
 " Carlyle would even have his fraternity organised like the 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 361 
 
 members of other professions, though he could ill chalk out 
 the plan." C. Fox's Journals, p. 96. 
 
 Page 223 
 
 In Books lies the soul: read the rest of this paragraph 
 aloud, exaggerating the stresses, or, better, mark the ac- 
 cented and unaccented syllables ; and note how truly rhyth- 
 mical, without being regularly metrical, it is. Compare 
 pp. 114 and 125. 
 
 Page 227 
 
 Byron ; C.'s dislike for Byron appears in his writings under 
 various forms. He adopts Southey's name, "The Satanic 
 School," for the school of Byron in poetry. " A dandy of 
 sorrows and acquainted with grief '' is C.'s formula for By- 
 ron in his Journal. " Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, 
 then, that fliest through the Universe seeking after some- 
 what to eat ; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough 
 is not given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe." 
 S. R. II, ix. " He [C] thinks that we, on the whole, do our 
 Hero-worship worse than any Nation in this world ever did 
 it before : that the Burns an Exciseman, the Byron a Liter- 
 ary Lion, are intrinsically, all things considered, a baser and 
 falser phenomenon than the Odin a God, the Mahomet a 
 Prophet of God." P. and P. I, vi. 
 
 Pages 230, 231 
 
 If you asked me ... I should beg to say : C. has been 
 found fault with abundantly for more successfully diagnos- 
 ing the world's ailments than suggesting remedies. An an- 
 swer to this criticism is suggested on pp. 233, 234: " For as 
 soon as men get to discern," etc. and " Light is the one thing 
 wanted," etc. no evil to be poor: C. certainly could 
 speak with authority on this subject. International copyright 
 laws have removed one of the aids to literary poverty of 
 C.'s time. If the next paragraph be sound doctrine, one can 
 only pity the modern Man (or more accurately Woman) of 
 Letters as author of the month's " Best Seller." 
 
 Page 236 
 
 Parliament : C.'s opinion of the British House of Commons 
 is concretely expressed in S. R. I, v, end : "Man is a Tool- 
 using Animal ... he collects, apparently by lot, six-hun- 
 dred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to 
 them, Make this nation toil for us, bleed for lis, hunger and 
 sorrow and sin for us • and they do it." 
 
 Page 239 
 
 a more beggarly one : see p. 104, and add. note. 
 
 Page 241 
 
 not even a devil : "And now we are deprived of the hope 
 of a future life. Hell being a myth." — Freshman theme ou 
 
362 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 The Decay of Faith. Belief I define to be : in connection 
 with tliis paragraph and tlie two toUowiug, re-read pp. 166, 
 167. 
 
 Page 245 
 
 gleam of Time betw^een t'vro Eternities: "Thus, like 
 some wild-Haming, wild-thundering train of Heaven's Ar- 
 tillery, does this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, 
 in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the un- 
 known Deep. Thus, like a God-created, Hre-breathing Spirit- 
 host, we emerge from the Inane. . . . O Heaven, whither? 
 Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it is through 
 Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. ' We are such 
 stuff . . . ' " S.R. Ill, viii, end. 
 
 Page 248 
 
 stalking mournful : there is abundant material for a quite 
 different, but equally true, picture of Jolinson. He was much 
 of a humorist and fun-lover : one of his Oxford tutors de- 
 scribed him as " gay and frolicksome." 
 
 Page 249 
 
 The essence of originality: compare p. 176. 
 
 Page 253 
 
 ' in a "world where much is to be done : ' the phrase 
 occurs in one of Johnson's prayers, " Against inquisitive and 
 perplexing thoughts," which illustrates his conservatism : 
 ..." enable me to drive from me all such unquiet and per- 
 plexing thoughts as may mislead or hinder me in the practice 
 of those duties which Thou hast required. . . . And while 
 it shall please Thee to continue me in this world, where much 
 is to be done, and little to be known, teach me by Thy Holy 
 Spirit, to withdraw my mind from unprofitable and danger- 
 ous enquiries, from difficulties vainly curious, and doubts 
 impossible to be solved." . . . Boswell's Johnson (year 1784). 
 ' Clear your mind of Cant : ' compare p. 99. One defini- 
 tion of cant gisen by Johnson in his Dictionary is: "A whin- 
 ing pretension to goodness in formal and affected terms." 
 Boswell reports. May 15, 1783, the following remarks of 
 Johnson: "My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You 
 may talk as other people do : you may say to a man, ' Sir, I 
 am your most humble servant.' You are not his most hum- 
 ble servant. . . . You tell a man, ' I am sorry you had such 
 bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much 
 wet.' You don't care six-pence whether he is wet or drj'. 
 You may talk in this manner ; it is a mode of talking in 
 Society: but don't think foolishly." a measured grandi- 
 loquence : Boswell (year 1773) reports Goldsmith's say- 
 ing to Johnson : " If you were to make little fishes talk, 
 tiiey would talk like whales." Macaulay says that John- 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 363 
 
 son's sentences were "done out of English into John- 
 sonese." Johnson himself observes (Idler, No. 70), " He 
 that tliinks with more extent than another will want words 
 of larger meaning." He remarked of a dramatic burlesque 
 {The Rehearsal): " It has not wit enough to keep it sweet;" 
 then after a jwiuse: "It lias not vitality enough to preserve 
 it from putrefaction." Perhaps the best example of his 
 " size of phraseology " is the famous ne/^t'or^- definition in the 
 Dictionary : " Anything reticulated or decussated, at equal 
 distances, with interstices between the intersections." For 
 one of the best examples of prose style extant, read John- 
 son's famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, Feb. 7, 1755, con- 
 cerning the dedication of the Dictionary. 
 
 Page 254 
 
 his Dictionary, one might have traced there ... a 
 genuine man: the mark of Johnson's personality as well 
 as his learning is here and there discoverable : " Lexico- 
 grapher. Writer of dictionaries; harmless drudge that 
 busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the sig- 
 nificance of words." His dislike of all things Scotch pro- 
 vokes the following definition: "Oats. A grain which in 
 England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland sup- 
 ports the people." Bozzy : after Macaulay's assertion that 
 Boswell's success was an accidental consequence of his super- 
 lative asininity, and Carlyle's that it was a greatness inev- 
 itably thrust upon him by his hero-worship, Mr. Birrell's 
 suggestion (/n the Name of the Bodleian: The JohnKonian 
 Legend), that Bozzy really knew what he was (artistically) 
 about, is worth pondering. 
 
 Page 257 
 
 Egoism ; . . . the source ... of all faults : compare the 
 god Wish, p. 25 and elsewhere. 
 
 Page 259 
 
 His Books : " The Confessions are the only writings of his 
 which I have read with any interest ; tliere you see tlie man 
 such as he really was, though I can't say that it is a duty to 
 lay open the Bluebeard chamliers of the heart." Report of 
 the lecture in C. Fox's Journals, p. 97. 
 
 Page 261 
 
 Hero . . . Robert Burns : the whole of C.'s short Essay 
 on Burns ought to be read in connection with the following 
 pages. Notice at how many points C. was at one with Burns 
 in the circumstances of early life, and therefore supremely 
 qualified to understand him. " Burns was the last of our 
 heroes, and here our Scotch Patriot was in his element. 
 Most graphically did he sketch some passages in the poet's 
 life." C. Fox's Journals, p. 98. 
 
364 ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 Page 262 
 
 Father , . . silent Hero : compare C.'s own case. 
 
 Page 264 
 
 His writings . . . only a poor fragment : compare pp. 
 155, 156. 
 
 Page 271 
 
 But — ! — : not many writers would venture just such an 
 ending. The spoken lecture had a more conventional close: 
 " He then told us he had more than occupied our time, aond 
 rushed down-stairs," C Fox's Journals, p. 98. 
 
 LECTURE VI 
 
 Page 273 
 
 Ideals . . . never . . . completely embodied : " For, 
 alas, the Ideal always has to grow in the Real, and to seek 
 out its hed and hoard there, often in a very sorry way. No 
 beautif ulest Poet is a Bird-of- Paradise, living on perfumes ; 
 sleeping in the jether with outspread wings. The Heroic, 
 independent of bed and board, is found in Drury Lane Theatre 
 only ; to avoid disappointments, let us bear this in mind." 
 P. and P. II, iv. 
 
 Page 276 
 
 a Divine Right or else a Diabolic Wrong : this sen- 
 tence rightly understood contains the essence of C.'s thought 
 on hero-worship. In its special application to Kings, com- 
 pare S. R. HI, vii; " He carries with him an authority from 
 God, or man will never give it liiiu. Can I choose my own 
 King ? I can clioose my own King Popinjay, and play 
 what farce or tragedy I may with him : but he who is (to 
 be my Ruler, whast' will is to be higher than my will, was 
 chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in such Obeflieiice 
 to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as conceivable." 
 "Every ruler lian a divine right to govern, in so far as he 
 represents God. bnt in no other." C. Fox's /owrna/s, p. 100. 
 Compare also P. mid P. 1, vi: "Yes, friends ; Hero-kings, 
 and a whole wurki nut unlieroic, — there lies the port :ind 
 happy haven, towards which, through all these stormtost 
 seas, French ReM)Inti()ns, Chartisms, Manchester Insurrec- 
 tions, that make tlie heart sick in these bad days, the Su- 
 preme Powers are driving us. On tlie whole, blessed be the 
 Supreme Powers, steru as they are ! Towards that haven 
 will we, O friends: let all true men, witii what of faculty 
 there is in tiiero, bend valiantly, incessantly, with thousand- 
 fold endeavour, thither, thither ! Tiiere. or else in the Oceaii- 
 abvsses, it is very clear to me we shall arrive." 
 
 Page 277 
 
 the beginning . . . Luther : see p. 173. 
 
ADDITIONAL NOTES 365 
 
 Page 284 
 
 whose vrhole world is forms : " I labored nothing," said 
 Laud, " more than that the external worship of God . . . 
 might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uni- 
 formity as might be, — being still of opinion that unity can- 
 not long continue in the church when uniformity is shut out 
 at the church doors." 
 
 Page 285 
 
 Forms which grow: see pp. 170, 250; also S. R. Ill, ii 
 ("Church Clothes"). 
 
 Page 286 
 
 the essence of all Churches: compare Ruskin, Sesame: 
 " For there is a true church wherever one hand meets an- 
 other helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church 
 which ever was or ever shall be." 
 
 Page 293 
 
 Cromwell's falsity . . . incredible: note the similarities 
 between C.'s vindication of Cromwell and his vindication of 
 Mahomet. 
 
 Page 308 
 
 Great men are not ambitious in that sense : but com- 
 pare Milton : — 
 
 " Fadie is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
 (That last infirmity of uoble miud) 
 To scorn delights, and live laborious days." 
 
 Lycidas, 70-72. 
 
 Page 311 
 
 To unfold your self, to work : " Hence, too, the folly 
 of that impossible Precept, Know thyself ; till it be translated 
 into this partially possible one. Know what thou canst loork at." 
 S. R. II, vii. " Produce ! Produce ! Were it but the piti- 
 fullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it in God's 
 name ! 'T is the utmost thou hast in thee : out with it, 
 then." II, ix. 
 
 Page 316 
 
 Cromw^ell's last words: "Truly God is good; indeed 
 He is ; He will not " — Then his speech failed him, but as 
 I apprehended, it was, " He will not leave me." This say- 
 ing, " God is good " he frequently used all along ; and would 
 speak it with much cheerfulness, and fervour of spirit, in 
 the midst of his pains. — Again he said: " I would be willing 
 to live to be farther serviceable to God and His People: 
 but my work is done. Yet God will be with His People." 
 Carlyle's Cromwell. 
 
 Page 321 
 
 Milton . . . could applaud : 
 
 " Cromwell, our chief of men, who through a cloud 
 Not of war only, but detractions rude. 
 Guided by faith and matchless fortitude. 
 To peace and truth thy glorious way hast ploughed, 
 
3GG ADDITIONAL NOTES 
 
 And Dunbar field, resouuds thy praises loud, 
 
 And Worcester's laureate wreath : yet much remains 
 
 To couquer still; Peace liatli her victories 
 
 No less renowned than War. 
 
 Sonnet, To the Lord General Cromwell. 
 
 Page 327 
 
 His complaint ... of the heavy burden : " I would 
 have been glad," said Cromwell, "to have lived under my 
 woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep, rather than under- 
 take such a government as this." 
 
 Page 328 
 
 rash ... to pronounce him . . . honest man: various 
 rather mild attempts were made from the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century to vindicate the character of Cromwell, 
 but the people at large remained partially or not at all con- 
 vinced. Carlyle was already making plans and gathering 
 material for his Cromioell, which appeared a few years 
 later, and still stands as the authoritative exposition of 
 Cromwell's character. He wrote to Emerson a few months 
 later: " I am now over head and ears in Cromwellian Books; 
 studying, for perhaps the fourth time in my life, to see if it 
 be possible to get any credible face-to-face acquaintance with 
 our English Puritan period ; . . . Nevertheless courage ! I 
 have got, within the last twelve months, actually, as it were, 
 to see that this Cromwell was one of the greatest souls ever 
 born of the English kin ; a great amorpjjous semi-articulate 
 Baresark; very interesting to me." " After many other most 
 effective touches in this sketch, which compelled you to side 
 with Carlyle as to Cromwell's self-devotion and magnanim- 
 ity, he gave the finishing-stroke with an air of most innocent 
 wonderment — ' And yet I believe 1 am the first to say that 
 Cromwell was an honest man ! ' " C. Fox's Journals, p. 101. 
 The day after this lecture C. wrote to his mother : " 1 con- 
 trived to tell them something about poor Cromwell, and I 
 think to convince them that he was a great and true man, 
 the valiant soldier in England of what John Kuox had 
 preached in Scotland." 
 
 Page 330 
 
 blamable ambition: see p. 311. A man in no case has 
 liberty to tell lies : it is worth while noting C.'s opinion 
 on this poiut, when the contrary view is so often defended. 
 
 Page 338 
 
 " He then toldus 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 attention and sympathy, wished us 
 a cordial farewell, and vanished." C. Fox's Journals, p. 102. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR OUTSIDE READING 
 
 Lect. I. Morley's English Writers, I, 264-275, and II, 335-365, 
 iucludiug translation of Voluspa; Mallet's iVor^Aeni Antiqui- 
 ties (Bohu Libr.) esp. 79 fP. and 402-456; R. B. Anderson's 
 Norse Mythology ; S. Laing's Translation of Heimskringla 
 (New Ed., Anderson, 1889) ; Grimm's Teutonic Mythology ; 
 G. Vigfusson's Prolegomena to Ed. of Sturlunga Saga; Ma- 
 bie's Norse Stories Retold from the Eddas ; Corpus Poeticum 
 Boreale. 
 
 Lect. II. Lives of Mahomet by Muir, Sprenger, and Syed Ameer 
 Ali ; Bosworth Smith's Mohammed and Mohammedanism; 
 W. Irving's Mohammed and his Successors; Gibbon's 2'Ae 
 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 1; Wherry's A 
 Comprehe7isive Commentary on the Quran, with Sale's Trans- 
 lation ; Rodwell's Translation (attempting to arrange chap- 
 ters in chronological order) ; Niildeke's 2'Ae Koran, in 
 Sketches from Eastern History ; Bnrckhardt's Travels in 
 Arabia. 
 
 Lect. III. C. A. Dinsmore's Aids to the Study of Dante ; M. F. 
 Rossetti's A Shadow of Dante; Davidson's Scartazzini's 
 Handbook to Dante; Symonds's A Study of Dante; Low- 
 ell's Dante (Essay) ; Norton's and Rossetti's Translations 
 of La Vita Nuoua; Norton's literal prose Translation of The 
 Divine Comedy; Longfellow's, Dean Flumptre's, and Gary's 
 verse Translations. Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare is the 
 best authority on that subject. 
 
 Lect. IV. Lives of Luther by Michelet (translated), J. Kostlin 
 (translated), J. A. Froude, and H. E. Jacobs; Luther's 
 Ninety -five Theses are given in Larned's History for Ready 
 Reference, IV, pp. 2446 S.; Luther's Table-Talk (tra,ns\ated) ; 
 Ranke's, D'Aubigud's, and Fischer's Histories of the Refor- 
 mation ; Seebohni's The Protestant Revolution. Lives of Knox 
 by McCrie, and Hume Brown; Knox's History of the Re- 
 formation in Scotland; Carlyle's The Portraits of John Knox. 
 
 Lect. V. B. Hill's Boswell's Life of Johnson; Macaulay's John- 
 son (written for Encycl. Brit.) ; Macaulay's and Carlyle's 
 Essays reviewing Croker's Boswell's Johnson. John Morley's 
 Rousseau; Lincoln's Rousseau and the French Revolutioti; 
 Davidson's Rousseau and Education according to Nature; 
 Lowell's Rousseau (Essay). Lives of Burns by Lockhart, 
 
368 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Blackie, Shairp ; R. L. Stevenson's " Burns " iu Familiar 
 
 Studies of Men and Books. 
 Lect. VI. Carlyle's Oliver Cronuvell's Letters and Speeches; Lives 
 of Cromwell by S. R. Gardiner and Theodore Roosevelt; 
 Essays on Cromwell in Goldwin Smith's Three English 
 Statesmen, and Forster's Biographical Essays ; Chapters on 
 " Puritan England " in J. R. Green's Short History of the 
 English People. Lives of Napoleon by W. M. Sloane, and 
 J. H. Rose ; Memoirs of Bourrienne, and Las Casas. 
 
SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING 
 
 The objects of studying Heroes may be resolved into three 
 main points: (1) knowledge of the characters and influence, and, 
 to a varying extent, the lives, of certain of the greatest men in 
 history, — this was the purpose of the lectures as avowed by 
 Carlyle himself at the beginning of the course ; (2) acquaintance 
 with the teachings, literary style, and character of one of the 
 most forceful and interesting personalities in the nineteenth cen- 
 tury, as revealed through one of his most popular books ; (3) 
 increase of that general culture of the moral as well as of intel- 
 lectual faculties "which " cometh not with observation " so much 
 as from unconscious absorption of the best in the best books and 
 the best men. Carlyle's relentless earnestness and insistence on 
 the side of truth and high endeavor, and his enormous range of 
 reading in literature and history make Heroes one of the richest 
 of books for the furtherance of this purpose. The editorial ma- 
 terial of the volume has been prepared with these aims in view ; 
 but in what manner, by what illustration or discussion the class- 
 room exercises may be made to contribute most to the student's 
 profit must of course be left in each case to the teacher's own 
 device. A suggestive — far from exhaustive — list of topics for 
 consideration in class, or for written recitation or examination, is 
 given below: an eight to ten minute written test on the day's 
 lesson, followed by general, informal discussion with the class is 
 an excellent (with large classes often the only possible) way of 
 making the most of the recitation hour. 
 
 The book gains in significance with every bit of acquaintance 
 with the widely varied style and subjects of Carlyle's other writ- 
 ings, — particularly Sartor Resartus, which (or at least selected 
 chapters from which) the student may be most profitably encour- 
 aged to read and helped to understand. Tlie Editor has foimd 
 the assignment of a few lessons in Prof. Bliss Perry's Selections 
 from Carlyle in the Little Masterpieces Series very helpful in 
 bringing before the student other aspects of Carlyle as teacher, 
 historian, and literary artist, or in enforcing those presented in 
 Heroes. If the time allotted to the study of the book is short, it 
 will be found better on the whole to study I, III, and V thor- 
 oughly in detail, and II, possibly VI, and if quite necessary IV, 
 more hastily. 
 
370 SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING 
 
 Lecture I. Definition of religion; of worship; of hero-worship. 
 Distinction between Paganism, Christianisni, and Scepticism. 
 The divineuess of Nature. Description of Iceland; its im- 
 portance to the student of Norse religion and literature. The 
 tree Igdrasil. The career of the man Odin. The gods and 
 jotuns of the Norse religion; its morals. Anecdotes about 
 Thor. Reasons why C. chose the Norse religion for bis 
 illustration in preference to any other. 
 
 Lecture II. Description of Arabia and Arab character ; the 
 Book of Job. Mahomet's life, 570-622. His personal char- 
 acteristics. The chief truths of Mahomet's religion and how 
 he learned them. Its chief defects. Mahomet and miracles. 
 The Koran. The Mahometan idea of the future life; the 
 truth of it. With what arguments does C. refute the " im- 
 postor Iheory ? " 
 
 Lecture III. " The distinction and identity of Poet and Prophet." 
 Present arguments to defend and to refute the assertion " that 
 the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest, or what you 
 will," etc. C.'s views on poetry. The life* of Dante. The 
 characteristics of his personality and his work; illnstrate 
 from his Divine Comedy. p]nuinerate the points of resem- 
 blance between the religions of the Norsemen, Mahomet, 
 and Dante. The morality of Shakespeare. " It is the Poet's 
 first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough." 
 " Shakspeare's Art is not Artifice." Shakespeare's laugh- 
 ter. Shakespeare as historian. Shakespeare unconsciously a 
 prophet. The political value of Shakespeare to the English 
 race. Comparison of Dante and Shakespeare. 
 
 Lecture IV. The relation of the religious beliefs of past, pre- 
 sent, and future; "originality" in religion. Idolatry char- 
 acteristic of all religions. The three acts of Protestantism. 
 The life of Luther previous to the Diet of Worms. His trial 
 at Worms. His prose style. Resemblances between Luther 
 and Mahomet; Luther and Dante. Knox's services to Scot- 
 land. Knox's ideal of government; C.'s comment. 
 
 Lecture V. Definition of the genuine man of letters ; its appli- 
 cability to Carlyle. The functions of books in the modern 
 world. Enumerate the obstacles against which Johnson had 
 to contend. Johnson's gospel. Rousseau's heroism; his mis- 
 sion. Resemblances between Burns and Carlyle. Burns's 
 " Lionism." 
 
 Lecture VI. The divine right of Kings. The significance and 
 achievement of Puritanism. Arguments presented by Car- 
 lyle in vindication of Cromwell. Cromwell and his Parlia- 
 ments. Napoleon's " kind of sincerity ; " his " faith," his 
 " quackeries." 
 
 General. Define " Hero." The value of hero-worship. Hero- 
 
S UGGES TIONS FOR • TEA CHING S T 1 
 
 worship the test of any age. C.'s ideas on government. 
 Belief and action. Scepticism; its consequences. The Frencli 
 Kevolution. Profit-and-loss philosophy. Silence. The world 
 of external nature as treated of in Heroes. Discuss, and 
 illustrate by specific passages, the characteristic qualities of 
 C.'s style in Heroes. What has the study of Heroes and 
 Hero- Worship been worth to you ? 
 
CARLYLE'S INDEX 
 
 AoiNCOUET, Shakspeare's battle of, 155. 
 
 Ali, young, Mahomet's kinsman and con- 
 vert, 81. 
 
 Allegory, the sportful shadow of earnest 
 Faith, 7, 43. 
 
 Ambition, foolish charge of, 308; laud- 
 able ambition, 311. 
 
 Arabia and the Arabs, 65. 
 
 Balder, the white Sungod, 25, 48. 
 
 Belief, the true god-announcing miracle, 
 79, 105, 203, 241 ; war of, 283. See Re- 
 ligion, Scepticism. 
 
 Benthamism, 104, 240. 
 
 Books, miraculous influence of, 223, 229 ; 
 our modern University, Church and 
 Parliament, 224. 
 
 Boswell, 254. 
 
 Bunyau'a Pilgrim's Progress, 8. 
 
 Burns, 2G1; his birth, and humble heroic 
 parents, 202 ; rustic dialect, 203 ; the 
 most gifted British soul of his century, 
 264 ; resemblance to Mirabeau, 205 ; 
 his sincerity, 207; his visit to Edin- 
 burgh, Lion-hunted to death, 209, 270. 
 
 Caabah, the, with its Black Stone and 
 Sacred Well, 68. 
 
 Canopus, Worship of, 12. 
 
 Charles I., fatally incapable of being dealt 
 with, 297. 
 
 China, literary governors of, 235. 
 
 Church. See Books. 
 
 Cromwell, 288 ; his hypochondria, 294, 
 301 ; early marriage and conversion ; 
 a quiet farmer, 295; his Ironsides, 
 298 ; his Speeches, 304, 323 ; his ' am- 
 bition,' and the like, 308 ; dismisses 
 the Rump Parliament, 320, 321 ; Pro- 
 tectorship and Parliamentary Futili- 
 ties, 323 ; his last days and closing 
 sorrows, 327. 
 
 Dante, 117; biography in his Book and 
 Portrait, 117 ; his birth, education, and 
 early career, 118, 119 ; love for Bea- 
 trice, unhappy marriage, banishment, 
 120, 121 ; uncourtier-like ways, 122 ; 
 death, 125 ; his Divina Commedia genu- 
 inely a song, 120 ; the Unseen World, 
 as figured in the Christianity of the 
 Middle Ages, 137 ; ' uses ' of Dante, 141. 
 
 Divid, the Hebrew King, G4. 
 
 Divine Right of Kings, 275. 
 
 Duty, 42, 88 ; infinite nature of, 103 ; 
 sceptical spiritual paralysis, 237. 
 
 Edda, the Scandinavian, 22. 
 Eighteenth Centuiy, the sceptical, 237- 
 
 246, 289. 
 Elizabethan Era, 144. 
 
 Faults, his, not the criterion of any man, 
 
 64. 
 Fichte's theory of literary men, 218. 
 Fire, miraculous nature of, 24. 
 Forms, necessity for, 285. 
 Frost. See Fire. 
 
 4 
 Goethe's ' characters,' 148 ; notablest of 
 
 literary men, 219. 
 Graphic, secret of being, 131. 
 Gray's misconception of Norse lore, 47. 
 
 Hampden, 288. 
 
 Heroes, Univer.sal History the united 
 biographies of, 1, 41 ; how ' little 
 critics' accomit for great men, 17 ; all 
 Heroes fundamentally of the same 
 stuff, 39, 59, 108, 162, 215, 200 ; Hero- 
 ism possible to all, 178, 203 ; Intellect 
 the primary outfit ; 149 ; no man a 
 hero to a valel-soul, 254, 255, 289, 300. 
 
 Hero-worship the tap-root of all Reli- 
 gion, 15-21, 58 ; perennial in man, 20, 
 115, 177, 281. 
 
 Hutchinson and Cromwell, 288, 327. 
 
 Iceland, the home of Norse Poets, 22. 
 
 Idolatry, 109; criminal only when in- 
 sincere, 171. 
 
 Igdrasil, the Life-Tree, 28, 144, 238. 
 
 Intellect, the summary of man's gifts, 
 150, 236. 
 
 Islam, 77. 
 
 Job, the Book of, 67. 
 
 Johnson's difficulties, poverty, hypochon- 
 dria, 247 ; rude self-help ; stanus genu- 
 inely by the old formulas, 249: his noble 
 iiuconscious sincerity, 251 ; twofold 
 Gospel, of Prudence and hatred of 
 Cant, 253 ; his Dictionary, 254; the 
 brave old Samuel, 255, 312. 
 
 Jotuns, 23, 49. 
 
 Kadijah, the good, Mahomet's first Wife, 
 74, 79. 
 
374 
 
 INDEX 
 
 King, the, a siiramary of all the varioiis 
 figures of Heroism, ■27'J ; indispens- 
 able in all movements of men, 317. 
 
 Knox's influence on Scotland, '202 ; the 
 bravest of Scotchmen, 205 ; his unas- 
 suming career ; is sent to tlie French 
 Galleys, 200; his colloquies with Queen 
 Mary, 209 ; vein of drollery ; a brother 
 to high and to low; his death, 212. 
 
 Koran, the, 88. 
 
 Lamaism, Grand, 6. 
 
 Leo X., the elegant Pagan Pope, 185. 
 
 Liberty and E<|uality, 178, 281. 
 
 Literary Men, 215 ; in China, 235. 
 
 Literature, chaotic condition of, 221 ; not 
 our heaviest evil, 236. 
 
 Luther's birtli and parentage, 178; hard- 
 ship and rigorous necessity ; death of 
 Alexis; becomes monk, 180; his reli- 
 gious despair; finds a Bible; deliver- 
 ance from darkness, 181 ; Rome; Tet- 
 zel, 183 ; burns the Pope's Bull, 187 ; 
 at the Diet of Worms, 188 ; King of 
 the Reformation, 193 ; ' Duke-Georges 
 nine days running,' 196 ; his little 
 daughter's deathbed ; hi» solitary Pat- 
 mos, 197 ; his Portrait, 199. 
 
 Mahomet's birth, boyhood, and youth, 
 71; marries Kadijah, 74; quiet, unam- 
 bitious life, 74 ; divine commission, 77 ; 
 the good Kadijah believes him ; Seid ; 
 young Ali, 80 ; offences, and sore strug- 
 gles, 81; flight from Mecca; being 
 driven to take the sword, he uses it, 
 84 ; the Koran, 88 ; a veritable Hero, 
 98 ; Seid's death, 98 ; freedom from 
 Cant, 99 ; the infinite nature of Duty, 
 103. 
 
 Mary, Queen, and Elhox, 209. 
 
 Mayflower, sailing of the, 201. 
 
 Mecca, 70. 
 
 Middle Ages, represented by Dante and 
 Shakspeare, 137, 139, 143. 
 
 Montrose, the Hero-Cavalier, 317. 
 
 Musical, all deep things, 114. 
 
 Napoleon, a portentous mixture of Quack 
 and Hero, 329 ; his instinct for the 
 practical, 330 ; his democratic faith 
 and heart-liatred for anarchy, .332 ; 
 apostatised from his old faith in Facts, 
 and took to believing in Semblances, 
 334 ; this Napoleonism was unjust, 
 and co^d not last, 336. 
 
 Nature an one great Miracle, 11, 94, 198 ; 
 a righteous Umpire, 85. 
 
 Novalis, on Man, 14; Belief, 80; Shak- 
 speare, 152. 
 
 Odin, the first Norse ' man of genius,' 29; 
 historic rumours and guesses, .32 ; how 
 he came to be deified, 35 ; invented 
 'runes,' 38; Hero, Prophet, God, 39. 
 
 Olaf , King, and Thor, 55. 
 
 Original, the, man, the sincere man, 63, 
 176. 
 
 Paganism, Scandinavian, 4; not mere 
 Allegory, 7 ; Nature-worship, 9, 41 ; 
 Hero-worship, 13 ; creed of our fathers, 
 21, 50, 54; lui personation of tlie visi- 
 ble workings of Nature, 23 ; contrasted 
 with Greek Paganism, 26; the first 
 Norse Thinker, 29 ; main practical Be- 
 lief ; indispensable to be brave, 44 ; 
 hearty, homely, rugged Mythology ; 
 Balder, Thor, 48 ; Consecration of 
 Valour, 57. 
 
 Parliaments superseded by Books, 228 ; 
 Cromwell's Parliaments, 318. 
 
 Past, tlie whole, the possession of the 
 Present, 57. 
 
 Poet, the, and Prophet, 110, 141, 156. 
 
 Poetry and Prose, distinction of, 113, 
 125. 
 
 Popery, 191. 
 
 Poverty, advantages of, 232. 
 
 Priest, the true, a kind of Prophet, 162. 
 
 Printing, consequences of, 228. 
 
 Private judgment, 173. 
 
 Progress of tlie Species, 166. 
 
 Prose. See Poetry. 
 
 Protestantism, the root of Modem Euro- 
 pean History, 173 ; not dead yet, 192 ; 
 its living fruit, 200, 277. 
 
 Purgatory, noble Catliolic conception of, 
 135. 
 
 Puritanism, founded by Knox, 200 ; true 
 beginning of America, 201 ; the one 
 epoch of Scotland, 202 ; Theocracy, 
 213; Puritanism in England, 283, 286, 
 313. 
 
 Quackery originates nothing, 5, 61 ; age 
 of, 243 ; Quacks and Dupes, 300. 
 
 Ragnarok, 54. 
 
 Reformer, the true, 163. 
 
 Religion, a man's, the chief fact with 
 regard to him, 2 ; based on Hero-wor- 
 ship, 15 ; propagating by the sword, 
 84 ; cannot succeed by being ' easy,' 96. 
 
 Revolution, 274; the French, 277, 328. 
 
 Richter, 12. 
 
 Right and Wrong, 103, 138. 
 
 Rousseau, not a strong man ; his Por- 
 trait; egoism, 256; his passionate ap- 
 peals, 258 ; his Books, like himself, 
 unhealthy ; the Evangelist of the 
 French Revolution, 259. 
 
 Scepticism, a spiritual paralysis, 236- 
 
 246, 289. 
 Scotland awakened into life by Knox, 
 
 202. 
 Secret, the open, 110. 
 Seid, Mahomet's slave and friend, 80, 
 
 98. 
 Shakspeare and the Elizabethan Era, 
 
 144 ; his all-sufiBcing intellect, 146, 
 
INDEX 
 
 375 
 
 150; his Characters, 148; his Dramas, 
 a part of Nature herself, 152; his joy- 
 ful tranquillity, and overflowing love 
 of laughter, 153 ; his hearty patriot- 
 ism, 155 ; glimpses of the world that 
 was in him, 156 ; a Heaven-sent Light- 
 bringer, 158; a King of Saxondom, 
 
 . 160. 
 
 Shekinah, Man the true, 13. 
 
 Silence, the great empire of, 142, 310. 
 
 Sincerity, better than gracefulness, 42 ; 
 the first characteristic of heroism and 
 originaUty, 62, 75, 176, 178, 217. 
 
 Theocracy, a, striven for by all true Re- 
 formers, 214, 312. 
 
 Thor, and his adventures, 25, 48, 49-53; 
 his last appearance, 55. 
 
 Thought, miraculous influence of, 29, 
 40, 229 ; musical Thought, 114. 
 
 Thunder. See Thor. 
 Time, the great mystery of, 10. 
 Tolerance, true and false, 194, 210. 
 Turenne, lOS. 
 
 Universities, 224. 
 
 Valour, the basis of all virtue, 44, 40 ; 
 
 Norse consecration of, 57 ; Christian 
 
 A^alour, 168. 
 Voltaire-worship, 19. 
 
 Wish, the Norse god, 25 ; enlarged into 
 
 a heaven by Mahomet, 104. 
 Worms, Luther at, 188. 
 Worship, transcendent wonder, 15. See 
 
 Hero-worship. 
 
 Zemzem, the sacred Well, 68. 
 
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 3. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, by Paul E. More. 
 
 4. PETER COOPER, by R. W. Raymond. 
 
 5. THOMAS JEFFERSON, by H. C. Merwin. 
 
 6. WILLIAM PENN, by George Hodges. 
 
 7. ULYSSES S. GRANT, by Walter Allen. 
 
 8. LEWIS AND CLARK, by William R. Lighton. 
 g.. JOHN MARSHALL, by James B. Thayer. 
 
 10. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, by Charles A. CoNANT, 
 
 11. WASHINGTON IRVING, by Henry W. Boynton. 
 
 12. PAUL JONES, by Hutchins Hapgood. 
 
 13. STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS, by W. G. Brown. 
 
 14. SAMUEL DE CHAMPLAIN, by H. D. Sedgwick, Jr. 
 School Edition, with portrait, each, 50 cents, net, postpaid. 
 
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 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
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