but to our apprehensions the
engineer is undeciphered all the while. Doubtless he reveals himself in
his work as the poet reveals himself in his song, but then this
revelation is made in a tongue unknown to the majority. After all, we do
not feel that we get nearer him. The man of letters, on the other hand,
is outspoken, he takes you into his confidence, he keeps no secret from
you. Be you beggar, be you king, you are welcome. He is no respecter of
persons. He gives without reserve his fancies, his wit, his wisdom; he
makes you a present of all that the painful or the happy years have
brought him. The writer makes his reader heir in full. Men of letters
are a peculiar class. They are never commonplace or prosaic--at least
those of them that mankind care for. They are airy, wise, gloomy,
melodious spirits. They give us the language we speak, they furnish the
subjects of our best talk. They are full of generous impulses and
sentiments, and keep the world young. They have said fine things on
every phase of human experience. The air is full of their voices. Their
books are the world's holiday and playground, and into these neither
care, nor the dun, nor despondency can follow the enfranchised man. Men
of letters forerun science as the morning star the dawn. Nothing has
been invented, nothing has been achieved, but has gleamed a
bright-coloured Utopia in the eyes of one or the other of these men.
Several centuries before the Great Exhibition of 1851 rose in Hyde Park,
a wondrous hall of glass stood, radiant in sunlight, in the verse of
Chaucer. The electric telegraph is not so swift as the flight of Puck.
We have not yet realised the hippogriff of Ariosto. Just consider what a
world this would be if ruled by the best thoughts of men of letters!
Ignorance would die at once, war would cease, taxation would be
lightened, not only every Frenchman, but every man in the world, would
have his hen in the pot. May would not marry January. The race of
lawyers and physicians would be extinct. Fancy a world the affairs of
which are directed by Goethe's wisdom and Goldsmith's heart! In such a
case, methinks the millennium were already come. Books are a finer world
within the world. With books are connected all my desires and
aspirations. When I go to my long sleep, on a book will my head be
pillowed. I care for no other fashion of greatness. I'd as lief not be
remembered at all as remembered in connection with