melancholy (as some
have said) the basis of thy being. Unconsciously, for thou
speakest of nothing, this great Universe is great to thee. Not
by levity of floating, but by stubborn force of swimming, shalt
thou make thy way. The Fates sing of thee that thou shalt many
times be thought an ass and a dull ox, and shalt with a god-like
indifference believe it. My friend,--and it is all untrue,
nothing ever falser in point of fact! Thou art of those great
ones whose greatness the small passer-by does not discern. Thy
very stupidity is wiser than their wisdom. A grand _vis
inertiae_ is in thee; how many grand qualities unknown to small
men! Nature alone knows thee, acknowledges the bulk and strength
of thee: thy Epic, unsung in words, is written in huge
characters on the face of this Planet,--sea-moles, cotton-trades,
railways, fleets and cities, Indian Empires, Americas, New-
Hollands; legible throughout the Solar System!

But the dumb Russians too, as I said, they, drilling all wild
Asia and wild Europe into military rank and file, a terrible yet
hitherto a prospering enterprise, are still dumber. The old
Romans also could not _speak,_ for many centuries:--not till the
world was theirs; and so many speaking Greekdoms, their logic-
arrows all spent, had been absorbed and abolished. The logic-
arrows, how they glanced futile from obdurate thick-skinned
Facts; Facts to be wrestled down only by the real vigour of
Roman thews!--As for me, I honour, in these loud-babbling days,
all the Silent rather. A grand Silence that of Romans;--nay the
grandest of all, is it not that of the gods! Even Triviality,
Imbecility, that can sit silent, how respectable is it in
comparison! The 'talent of silence' is our fundamental one.
Great honour to him whose Epic is a melodious hexameter Iliad;
not a jingling Sham-Iliad, nothing true in it but the hexameters
and forms merely. But still greater honour, if his Epic be a
mighty Empire slowly built together, a mighty Series of Heroic
Deeds,--a mighty Conquest over Chaos; _which_ Epic the 'Eternal
Melodies' have, and must have, informed and dwelt in, as it sung
itself! There is no mistaking that latter Epic. Deeds are
greater than Words. Deeds have such a life, mute but undeniable,
and grow as living trees and fruit-trees do; they people the
vacuity of Time, and make it green and worthy. Why should the
oak prove logically that it ought to grow, and will grow? Plant
it,