l originality is relative. Every thinker is retrospective.
The learned member of the legislature, at Westminister,[571] or at
Washington, speaks and votes for thousands. Show us the constituency,
and the now invisible channels by which the senator is made aware of
their wishes, the crowd of practical and knowing men, who, by
correspondence or conversation, are feeding him with evidence,
anecdotes, and estimates, and it will bereave his fine attitude and
resistance of something of their impressiveness. As Sir Robert
Peel[572] and Mr. Webster[573] vote, so Locke[574] and Rousseau[575]
think for thousands; and so there were foundations all around
Homer,[576] Menu,[577] Saada,[578] or Milton,[579] from which they
drew; friends, lovers, books, traditions, proverbs,--all
perished,--which, if seen, would go to reduce the wonder. Did the bard
speak with authority? Did he feel himself overmatched by any
companion? The appeal is to the consciousness of the writer. Is there
at last in his breast a Delphi[580] whereof to ask concerning any
thought or thing whether it be verily so, yea or nay? and to have
answer, and rely on that? All the debts which such a man could
contract to other wit, would never disturb his consciousness of
originality: for the ministrations of books, and of other minds, are a
whiff of smoke to that most private reality with which he has
conversed.

9. It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius, in
the world, was no man's work, but came by wide social labor, when a
thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse. Our English
Bible[581] is a wonderful specimen of the strength and music of the
English language. But it was not made by one man, or at one time; but
centuries and churches brought it to perfection. There never was a
time when there was not some translation existing. The Liturgy,[582]
admired for its energy and pathos, is an anthology of the piety of
ages and nations, a translation of the prayers and forms of the
Catholic church,--these collected, too, in long periods, from the
prayers and meditations of every saint and sacred writer all over the
world. Grotius[583] makes the like remark in respect to the Lord's
Prayer, that the single clauses of which it is composed were already
in use, in the time of Christ, in the rabbinical forms.[584] He picked
out the grains of gold. The nervous language of the Common Law,[585]
the impressive forms of our courts, and the precision and sub