with most
uncommunicative aspects; not brothers at a banquet, but combatants and
wrestlers, watching for solecisms in the other's talk, or toiling to
drag in some laboured witticism of their own, after the classical
precedent of Hercules and Cerberus: those feasts of reason, how vapid!
those flows of soul, how icily congealing! those Attic nights, how dim
and dismal! Once more; and, remember me, I speak in a personated
character of the general, and not experimentally; so, flinging self
aside, let me speak what I have seen: grant that the world-without crown
a man with bays, and lead him to his Theban home with tokens of
rejoicing; is the victor there set on high, chapleted, and honoured as
Nemean heroes should be or does he not rather droop instantly again into
the obscure unit among a level mass, only the less welcome for having
stood up, a Saul or a Musaeus, with his head above his fellows? Verily,
no man is a proph--Enough, enough! for ours is a prerogative, a glorious
calling, and the crown of barren leaves is costlier than his of Rabbah;
enough, enough! sing we the praises, count we well the pleasures of
fervent, overflowing authorship. There, in perfect shape before the
eyes--there, well born in beauty--there perpetually (so your fondness
hopes) to live--slumbers in her best white robe the mind's own fairest
daughter; the Minerva has sprung in panoply from that parental aching
head, and stands in her immortal independence; an Eve, his own heart's
fruit, welcomes delighted Adam. You have made something, some good work,
bodily; your communion has commenced with those of times to come; your
mind has produced a witness to its individuality; there is a tablet
sacred to its memory standing among men for ever.

A thinker is seldom great in conversation, and the glib talkers who have
silenced such a one frequently in clamorous argument, founder in his
deep thoughts, blundering, like Stephanos and Trinculos--(let Caliban be
swamped;) such generous revenge is sweet: a writer often unexplained,
because speaking little, and that little foolishly mayhap, and lightly
for the holiday's sake of an unthoughful rest, finds his opportunities
in printing, and gives the self-expounding that he needs; such
heart-emptyings yield heart-ease: an author, who has done his good work
well--for such a one alone we speak--while, privately, he scarce could
have refreshed mankind by petty driblets--in the perpetuity, publicity,
and universal acce