es if you can find them: All the Heroic Souls that
ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut
a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in
England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England. I tell thee,
they had not a hammer to begin with; and yet Wren built St. Paul's:
not an articulated syllable; and yet there have come English
Literatures, Elizabethan Literatures, Satanic-School, Cockney-School,
and other Literatures;--once more, as in the old time of the
_Leitourgia_, a most waste imbroglio, and world-wide jungle and
jumble; waiting terribly to be 'well-edited' and 'well-burnt'! Arachne
started with forefinger and thumb, and had not even a distaff; yet
thou seest Manchester, and Cotton Cloth, which will shelter naked
backs, at twopence an ell.

Work? The quantity of done and forgotten work that lies silent under
my feet in this world, and escorts and attends me, and supports and
keeps me alive, wheresoever I walk or stand, whatsoever I think or do,
gives rise to reflections! Is it not enough, at any rate, to strike
the thing called 'Fame' into total silence for a wise man? For fools
and unreflective persons, she is and will be very noisy, this 'Fame,'
and talks of her 'immortals' and so forth: but if you will consider
it, what is she? Abbot Samson was not nothing because nobody _said_
anything of him. Or thinkest thou, the Right Honourable Sir Jabesh
Windbag can be made something by Parliamentary Majorities and Leading
Articles? Her 'immortals'! Scarcely two hundred years back can Fame
recollect articulately at all; and there she but maunders and mumbles.
She manages to recollect a Shakspeare or so; and prates, considerably
like a goose, about him;--and in the rear of that, onwards to the
birth of Theuth, to Hengst's Invasion, and the bosom of Eternity, it
was all blank; and the respectable Teutonic Languages, Teutonic
Practices, Existences, all came of their own accord, as the grass
springs, as the trees grow; no Poet, no work from the inspired heart
of a Man needed there; and Fame has not an articulate word to say
about it! Or ask her, What, with all conceivable appliances and
mnemonics, including apotheosis and human sacrifices among the number,
she carries in her head with regard to a Wodan, even a Moses, or other
such? She begins to be uncertain as to what they were, whether spirits
or men of mould,--gods, charlatans; begins sometimes to have a
misgiv