Part 15 (1/2)
”Sir, G.o.d hath taken away your eldest son by a cannon-shot. It brake his leg. We were necessitated to have it cut off, whereof he died.
”Sir, you know my own trials this way;[24] but the Lord supported me with this, that the Lord took him into the happiness we all pant for and live for. There is your precious child, full of glory, never to know sin or sorrow any more. He was a gallant young man, exceedingly gracious. G.o.d give you his comfort. Before his death he was so full of comfort, that to Frank Russel and myself he could not express it, 'it was so great above his pain.' This he said to us. Indeed it was admirable. A little after, he said one thing lay upon his spirit. I asked him what that was. He told me it was, that G.o.d had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of his enemies. At his fall, his horse being killed with the bullet, and, as I am informed, three horses more, I am told he bid them open to the right and left, that he might see the rogues run. Truly he was exceedingly beloved in the army, of all that knew him. But few knew him; for he was a precious young man, fit for G.o.d. You have cause to bless the Lord. He is a glorious saint in heaven; wherein you ought exceedingly to rejoice. Let this drink up your sorrow: seeing these are not feigned words to comfort you, but the thing is so real and undoubted a truth. You may do all things by the strength of Christ. Seek that, and you shall easily bear your trial. Let this public mercy to the church of G.o.d make you to forget your private sorrow. The Lord be your strength; so prays
”Your truly faithful and loving brother, ”OLIVER CROMWELL.”
And add this n.o.ble pa.s.sage, in which Carlyle speaks of the morbid affection of Cromwell's mind:--
”In those years it must be that Dr. Simcott, physician in Huntingdon, had to do with Oliver's hypochondriac maladies. He told Sir Philip Warwick, unluckily specifying no date, or none that has survived, 'he had often been sent for at midnight;' Mr. Cromwell for many years was very 'splenetic,' (spleen-struck,) often thought he was just about to die, and also 'had fancies about the Town Cross.'[25] Brief intimation, of which the reflective reader may make a great deal. Samuel Johnson too had hypochondrias; all great souls are apt to have; and to be in thick darkness generally, till the eternal ways and the celestial guiding stars disclose themselves, and the vague abyss of life knit itself up into firmaments for them. The temptations in the wilderness, choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or loose form, are appointed for every man that will a.s.sert a soul in himself and be a man. Let Oliver take comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quant.i.ty of sorrow he has, does it not mean withal the quant.i.ty of _sympathy_ he has, the quant.i.ty of faculty and victory he shall yet have? 'Our sorrow is the inverted image of our n.o.bleness.' The depth of our despair measures what capability, and height of claim, we have to hope. Black smoke as of Tophet filling all your universe, it can yet by true heart-energy become _flame_, and brilliancy of heaven. Courage!”
Were the flame but a pure as well as a bright flame! Sometimes we know the black phantoms change to white angel forms; the vulture is metamorphosed into a dove. Was it so in this instance? Unlike Mr.
Carlyle, we are willing to let each reader judge for himself; but perhaps we should not be so generous if we had studied ourselves sick in wading through all that ma.s.s of papers, and had nothing to defend us against the bitterness of biliousness, except a growing enthusiasm about our hero.
EMERSON'S ESSAYS[26]
At the distance of three years this volume follows the first series of Essays, which have already made to themselves a circle of readers, attentive, thoughtful, more and more intelligent; and this circle is a large one if we consider the circ.u.mstances of this country, and of England also, at this time.
In England it would seem there are a larger number of persons waiting for an invitation to calm thought and sincere intercourse than among ourselves. Copies of Mr. Emerson's first published little volume called ”Nature,” have there been sold by thousands in a short time, while one edition has needed seven years to get circulated here. Several of his orations and essays from the ”Dial” have also been republished there, and met with a reverent and earnest response.
We suppose that while in England the want of such a voice is as great as here, a larger number are at leisure to recognize that want; a far larger number have set foot in the speculative region, and have ears refined to appreciate these melodious accents.
Our people, heated by a partisan spirit, necessarily occupied in these first stages by bringing out the material resources of the land, not generally prepared by early training for the enjoyment of books that require attention and reflection, are still more injured by a large majority of writers and speakers, who lend all their efforts to flatter corrupt tastes and mental indolence, instead of feeling it their prerogative and their duty to admonish the community of the danger and arouse it to n.o.bler energy. The plan of the popular writer or lecturer is not to say the best he knows in as few and well-chosen words as he can, making it his first aim to do justice to the subject. Rather he seeks to beat out a thought as thin as possible, and to consider what the audience will be most willing to receive.
The result of such a course is inevitable. Literature and art must become daily more degraded; philosophy cannot exist. A man who feels within his mind some spark of genius, or a capacity for the exercises of talent, should consider himself as endowed with a sacred commission. He is the natural priest, the shepherd of the people. He must raise his mind as high as he can towards the heaven of truth, and try to draw up with him those less gifted by nature with ethereal lightness. If he does not so, but rather employs his powers to flatter them in their poverty, and to hinder aspiration by useless words, and a mere seeming of activity, his sin is great; he is false to G.o.d, and false to man.
Much of this sin indeed is done ignorantly. The idea that literature calls men to the genuine hierarchy is almost forgotten. One, who finds himself able, uses his pen, as he might a trowel, solely to procure himself bread, without having reflected on the position in which he thereby places himself.
Apart from the troop of mercenaries, there is one, still larger, of those who use their powers merely for local and temporary ends, aiming at no excellence other than may conduce to these. Among these rank persons of honor and the best intentions; but they neglect the lasting for the transient, as a man neglects to furnish his mind that he may provide the better for the house in which his body is to dwell for a few years.
At a period when these sins and errors are prevalent, and threaten to become more so, how can we sufficiently prize and honor a mind which is quite pure from such? When, as in the present case, we find a man whose only aim is the discernment and interpretation of the spiritual laws by which we live, and move, and have our being, all whose objects are permanent, and whose every word stands for a fact.
If only as a representative of the claims of individual culture in a nation which is p.r.o.ne to lay such stress on artificial organization and external results, Mr. Emerson would be invaluable here. History will inscribe his name as a father of his country, for he is one who pleads her cause against herself.
If New England may be regarded as a chief mental focus to the New World,--and many symptoms seem to give her this place,--as to other centres belong the characteristics of heart and lungs to the body politic; if we may believe, as we do believe, that what is to be acted out, in the country at large, is, most frequently, first indicated there, as all the phenomena of the nervous system are in the fantasies of the brain, we may hail as an auspicious omen the influence Mr.
Emerson has there obtained, which is deep-rooted, increasing, and, over the younger portion of the community, far greater than that of any other person.
His books are received there with a more ready intelligence than elsewhere, partly because his range of personal experience and ill.u.s.tration applies to that region; partly because he has prepared the way for his books to be read by his great powers as a speaker.
The audience that waited for years upon the lectures, a part of which is incorporated into these volumes of Essays, was never large, but it was select, and it was constant. Among the hearers were some, who, though, attracted by the beauty of character and manner, they were willing to hear the speaker through, yet always went away discontented. They were accustomed to an artificial method, whose scaffolding could easily be retraced, and desired an obvious sequence of logical inferences. They insisted there was nothing in what they had heard, because they could not give a clear account of its course and purport. They did not see that Pindar's odes might be very well arranged for their own purpose, and yet not bear translating into the methods of Mr. Locke.
Others were content to be benefited by a good influence, without a strict a.n.a.lysis of its means. ”My wife says it is about the elevation of human nature, and so it seems to me,” was a fit reply to some of the critics. Many were satisfied to find themselves excited to congenial thought and n.o.bler life, without an exact catalogue of the thoughts of the speaker.
Those who believed no truth could exist, unless encased by the burrs of opinion, went away utterly baffled. Sometimes they thought he was on their side; then presently would come something on the other. He really seemed to believe there were two sides to every subject, and even to intimate higher ground, from which each might be seen to have an infinite number of sides or bearings, an impertinence not to be endured!
The partisan heard but once, and returned no more.
But some there were,--simple souls,--whose life had been, perhaps, without clear light, yet still a-search after truth for its own sake, who were able to receive what followed on the suggestion of a subject in a natural manner, as a stream of thought. These recognized, beneath the veil of words, the still small voice of conscience, the vestal fires of lone religious hours, and the mild teachings of the summer woods.