ossip of one poor Monk, and in
Nature nowhere else. Oblivion had so nigh swallowed him altogether,
even to the echo of his ever having existed. What regiments and hosts
and generations of such has Oblivion already swallowed! Their crumbled
dust makes up the soil our life-fruit grows on. Said I not, as my old
Norse Fathers taught me, The Life-tree Igdrasil, which waves round
thee in this hour, whereof thou in this hour art portion, has its
roots down deep in the oldest Death-Kingdoms; and grows; the Three
Nornas, or _Times_, Past, Present, Future, watering it from the Sacred
Well!

For example, who taught thee to _speak_? From the day when two
hairy-naked or fig-leaved Human Figures began, as uncomfortable
dummies, anxious no longer to be dumb, but to impart themselves to one
another; and endeavoured, with gaspings, gesturings, with unsyllabled
cries, with painful pantomime and interjections, in a very
unsuccessful manner,--up to the writing of this present copyright
Book, which also is not very successful! Between that day and this, I
say, there has been a pretty space of time; a pretty spell of work,
which _somebody_ has done! Thinkest thou there were no poets till Dan
Chaucer? No heart burning with a thought, which it could not hold, and
had no word for; and needed to shape and coin a word for,--what thou
callest a metaphor, trope, or the like? For every word we have, there
was such a man and poet. The coldest word was once a glowing new
metaphor, and bold questionable originality. 'Thy very ATTENTION, does
it not mean an _attentio_, a STRETCHING-TO?' Fancy that act of the
mind, which all were conscious of, which none had yet named,--when
this new 'poet' first felt bound and driven to name it! His
questionable originality, and new glowing metaphor, was found
adoptable, intelligible; and remains our name for it to this day.

Literature:--and look at Paul's Cathedral, and the Masonries and
Worships and Quasi-Worships that are there; not to speak of
Westminster Hall and its wigs! Men had not a hammer to begin with, not
a syllabled articulation: they had it all to make;--and they have made
it. What thousand thousand articulate, semi-articulate,
earnest-stammering _Prayers_ ascending up to Heaven, from hut and
cell, in many lands, in many centuries, from the fervent kindled souls
of innumerable men, each struggling to pour itself forth incompletely,
as it might, before the incompletest _Liturgy_ could be compiled! The
L