'soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova 'Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that 'strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft 'streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, 'came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, 'a charnel-house with spectres; but godlike, and my Father's! 'With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow 'man: with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wander'ing, wayward man! Art thou not tried, and beaten with 10 'stripes, even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the royal 'mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so 'heavy-laden; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my 'Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my 'bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! -Truly, the 15 'din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with 'the mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening 'discord, but a melting one; like inarticulate cries, and sob'bings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are 'prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now my 20 'needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame; Man, with his so 'mad Wants and so mean Endeavours, had become the dearer 'to me; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I now first 'named him Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of 'that "Sanctuary of Sorrow"; by strange, steep ways, had I 25 'too been guided thither; and ere long its sacred gates would 'open, and the "Divine Depth of Sorrow" lie disclosed to me.'

'... Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Great'ness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all 'his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will 30 'the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Con'fectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock 'company, to make one Shoeblack HAPPY? They cannot ac'complish it, above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack also has 'a Soul quite other than his Stomach; and would require, if 35 'you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and satura'tion, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God's in

'finite Universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infi'nitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of 'Hochheimer, a Throat like that of Ophiuchus: speak not of 'them; to the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No 'sooner is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might 5 'have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a Uni'verse, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the 'proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most 'maltreated of men.-Always there is a black spot in our 'sunshine: it is even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves.

1Ο

'But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. 'By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, we 'come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this we 'fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. It is 'simple payment of our wages, of our deserts; requires neither 15 'thanks nor complaint; only such overplus as there may 'be do we account Happiness; any deficit again is Misery. 'Now consider that we have the valuation of our own deserts 'ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each 'of us, do you wonder that the balance should so often dip 20 'the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry: See there, what 'a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used!-I tell 'thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou 'fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou 'deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it 25 'happiness to be only shot: fancy that thou deservest to be 'hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in hemp.

'So true it is, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life 'can be increased in value not so much by increasing your 'Numerator as by lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless 30 'my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will 'give Infinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then; thou 'hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our 'time write: "It is only with Renunciation (Entsagen) that 'Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin."

'I asked myself: What is this that, ever since earliest

35

'years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting 'and self-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a word: is it 'not because thou art not HAPPY? Because the THOU (Sweet 'gentleman) is not sufficiently honoured, nourished, soft5 'bedded, and lovingly cared-for? Foolish soul! What Act 'of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy? A 'little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if 'thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be 'Unhappy! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, 10 'that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to 'eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not 'given thee? Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.'

'Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it!' cries he elsewhere: 'there is in man a HIGHER than Love of Happiness: he 15 'can do without Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessed'ness! Was it not to preach-forth this same HIGHER that sages 'and martyrs, the Poet and the Priest, in all times, have spoken 'and suffered; bearing testimony, through life and through 'death, of the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike 20 only has he Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired 'Doctrine art thou also honoured to be taught; O Heavens! 'and broken with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou 'become contrite, and learn it! O thank thy Destiny for 'these; thankfully bear what yet remain: thou hadst need 25 of them; the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By be'nignant fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated 'chronic Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring 'billows of Time, thou art not engulfed, but borne aloft into 'the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure; love God. This 30 'is the EVERLASTING YEA, wherein all contradiction is solved: 'wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.'

And again: 'Small is it that thou canst trample the Earth 'with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno trained 'thee: thou canst love the Earth while it injures thee, and 35 'even because it injures thee; for this a Greater than Zeno 'was needed, and he too was sent. . . .'

HEROES AND HERO-WORSHIP

THE HERO AS A MAN OF LETTERS

[Johnson]

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 5 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, Johnson's life could 10 have been other than a painful one. The world might have had more of profitable work out of him, or less; but his effort against the world's work could never have been a light one. Nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an element of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and 15 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: 20 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 25 could come at: school-languages and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of 'fourpence-halfpenny a day.' Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's. One remembers always that story of the shoes 30 at Oxford: the rough, seamy-faced, rawboned College Servi

tor stalking about, in winter-season, with his shoes worn-out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them, looking at them near, with dim eyes, with what 5 thoughts, pitches them out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here; a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of the man's life, To 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 15 the semblance, on the thing she has given another than us! —

And yet with all this rugged pride of manhood and selfhelp, was there ever soul more tenderly affectionate, loyally submissive to what was really higher than he? Great souls are always loyally submissive, reverent to what is over them; 20 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 alto25 gether in the old; he found the old opinions credible for him, fit for him; and in a right heroic manner lived under them. He is well worth study in regard to that. For we are to say that Johnson was far other than a mere man of words and formulas; he was a man of truths and facts. He stood by 30 the old formulas; the happier was it for him that he could so stand: but in all formulas that he could stand by, there needed to be a most genuine substance. Very curious how, in that poor Paper-age, so barren, artificial, thick-quilted with Pedantries, Hearsays, the great Fact of this Universe 35 glared in, forever wonderful, indubitable, unspeakable, divineinfernal, upon this man too! How he harmonised his