needed to eradicate.

Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows himself, is there any
reader that can part with him in declared enmity? Let us confess,
there is that in the wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which
almost attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is that of
a man who had said to Cant, Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou
canst not be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me: a man who
had manfully defied the 'Time-prince,' or Devil, to his face; nay
perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth to
that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons,
in all places, at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, were he but
a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome.

Still the question returns on us: How could a man occasionally of keen
insight, not without keen sense of propriety, who had real Thoughts to
communicate, resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on
the absurd? Which question he were wiser than the present Editor who
should satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, that
perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not
conceivable that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much
bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and misgone,
Literature also would never rightly prosper: that striving with his
characteristic vehemence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever
without success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all
colours, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam? With
all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdroeckh desperation
enough for this.

A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. It is, that
Teufelsdroeckh is not without some touch of the universal feeling, a
wish to proselytise. How often already have we paused, uncertain
whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism and
Despair, or Love and Hope only seared into the figure of these!
Remarkable, moreover, is this saying of his: 'How were Friendship
possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: otherwise
impossible; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commercial League. A
man, be the Heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were
ten men, united in Love, capable of being and of doing what ten
thousand singly would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to
man.' And now in conjunction therewith consider this other: '