Kitabı oku: «Spare Hours», sayfa 17

We have only space for one more – verses entitled “Heart’s-Ease.”

Heart’s-Ease

 
“Oh, Heart’s-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower?
How shall I draw thee thence? – so much I need
The healing aid of thine enshrinéd power
To veil the past – and bid the time good speed!
 
 
“I gather it – it withers on my breast;
The heart’s-ease dies when it is laid on mine;
Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess’d,
Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.
 
 
“Take from me things gone by – oh! change the past —
Renew the lost – restore me the decay’d, —
Bring back the days whose tide has ebb’d so fast —
Give form again to the fantastic shade!
 
 
“My hope, that never grew to certainty, —
My youth, that perish’d in its vain desire, —
My fond ambition, crush’d ere it could be
Aught save a self-consuming, wasted fire:
 
 
“Bring these anew, and set me once again
In the delusion of Life’s Infancy —
I was not happy, but I knew not then
That happy I was never doom’d to be.
 
 
“Till these things are, and powers divine descend —
Love, kindness, joy, and hope, to gild my day,
In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend,
Thy Spirit, Heart’s-Ease, is too far away!”
 

We would fain have given two poems entitled “Bessy” and “Youth and Age.” Everything in this little volume is select and good. Sensibility and sense in right measure and proportion and keeping, and in pure, strong classical language; no intemperance of thought or phrase. Why does not “V.” write more?

We do not very well know how to introduce our friend Mr. Ellison, “The Bornnatural,” who addresses his “Madmoments to the Light-headed of Society at large.” We feel as a father, a mother, or other near of kin would at introducing an ungainly gifted and much loved son or kinsman, who had the knack of putting his worst foot foremost, and making himself imprimis ridiculous.

There is something wrong in all awkwardness, a want of nature somewhere, and we feel affronted even still, after we have taken the Bornnatural⁴⁸ to our heart, and admire and love him, at his absurd gratuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight one farrago of oddities and offences – coarse foreign paper – bad printing – italics broad-cast over every page – the words run into each other in a way we are glad to say is as yet quite original, making such extraordinary monsters of words as these – beingsriddle – sunbeammotes – gooddeed – midjune – summerair – selffavor – seraphechoes – puredeedprompter – barkskeel, &c. Now we like Anglo-Saxon and the polygamous German,⁴⁹ but we like better the well of English undefiled – a well, by the by, much oftener spoken of than drawn from; but to fashion such words as these words are, is as monstrous as for a painter to compose an animal not out of the elements, but out of the entire bodies of several, of an ass, for instance, a cock and a crocodile, so as to produce an outrageous individual, with whom even a duck-billed Platypus would think twice before he fraternized – ornithorynchous and paradoxical though he be, poor fellow.

And yet our Bornnatural’s two thick and closely small-printed volumes are as full of poetry as is an “impassioned grape” of its noble liquor.

He is a true poet. But he has not the art of singling his thoughts, an art as useful in composition as in husbandry, as necessary for young fancies as young turnips. Those who have seen our turnip fields in early summer, with the hoers at their work, will understand our reference. If any one wishes to read these really remarkable volumes, we would advise them to begin with “Season Changes” and “Emma, a Tale.” We give two Odes on Psyche, which are as nearly perfect as anything out of Milton or Tennyson.

The story is the well-known one of Psyche and Cupid, told at such length, and with so much beauty and pathos and picturesqueness by Apuleius, in his “Golden Ass.” Psyche is the human soul – a beautiful young woman. Cupid is spiritual, heavenly love – a comely youth. They are married, and live in perfect happiness, but by a strange decree of fate, he comes and goes unseen, tarrying only for the night; and he has told her, that if she looks on him with her bodily eye, if she tries to break through the darkness in which they dwell, then he must leave her, and forever. Her two sisters – Anger and Desire, tempt Psyche. She yields to their evil counsel, and thus it fares with her: —

Ode to Psyche

 
“1. Let not a sigh be breathed, or he is flown!
With tiptoe stealth she glides, and throbbing breast,
Towards the bed, like one who dares not own
Her purpose, and half shrinks, yet cannot rest
From her rash Essay: in one trembling hand
She bears a lamp, which sparkles on a sword;
In the dim light she seems a wandering dream
Of loveliness: ’tis Psyche and her Lord,
Her yet unseen, who slumbers like a beam
Of moonlight, vanishing as soon as scann’d!
 
 
“2. One Moment, and all bliss hath fled her heart,
Like windstole odours from the rosebud’s cell,
Or as the earthdashed dewdrop which no art
Can e’er replace: alas! we learn fullwell
How beautiful the Past when it is o’er,
But with scal’d eyes we hurry to the brink,
Blind as the waterfall: oh, stay thy feet,
Thou rash one, be content to know no more
Of bliss than thy heart teaches thee, nor think
The sensual eye can grasp a form more sweet —
 
 
“3. Than that which for itself the soul should chuse
For higher adoration; but in vain!
Onward she moves, and as the lamp’s faint hues
Flicker around, her charmed eyeballs strain,
For there he lies in undreamt loveliness!
Softly she steals towards him, and bends o’er
His slumberlidded eyes, as a lily droops
Faint o’er a folded rose: one caress
She would but dares not take, and as she stood,
An oildrop from the lamp fell burning sore!
 
 
“4. Thereat sleepfray’d, dreamlike the God takes Wing
And soars to his own skies, while Psyche strives
To clasp his foot, and fain thereon would cling,
But falls insensate;
·····
Psyche! thou shouldst have taken that high gift
Of Love as it was meant, that mystery
Did ask thy faith, the Gods do test our worth,
And ere they grant high boons our heart would sift!
 
 
“5. Hadst thou no divine Vision of thine own?
Didst thou not see the Object of thy Love
Clothed with a Beauty to dull clay unknown?
And could not that bright Image, far above
The Reach of sere Decay, content thy Thought?
Which with its glory would have wrapp’d thee round,
To the Gravesbrink, untouched by Age or Pain!
Alas! we mar what Fancy’s Womb has brought
Forth of most beautiful, and to the Bound
Of Sense reduce the Helen of the Brain!”
 

What a picture! Psyche, pale with love and fear, bending in the uncertain light, over her lord, with the rich flush of health and sleep and manhood on his cheek, “as a lily droops faint o’er a folded rose!” We remember nothing anywhere finer than this.

Ode to Psyche

 
“1. Why stand’st thou thus at Gaze
In the faint Tapersrays,
With strainëd Eyeballs fixed upon that Bed?
Has he then flown away,
Lost, like a Star in Day,
Or like a Pearl in Depths unfathomëd?
Alas! thou hast done very ill,
Thus with thine Eyes the Vision of thy Soul to kill!
 
 
“2. Thought’st thou that earthly Light
Could then assist thy Sight,
Or that the Limits of Reality
Could grasp Things fairer than
Imagination’s Span,
Who communes with the Angels of the Sky,
Thou graspest at the Rainbow, and
Wouldst make it as the Zone with which thy Waist is spanned.
 
 
“3. And what find’st thou in his Stead?
Only the empty Bed!
·····
Thou sought’st the Earthly and therefore
The heavenly is gone, for that must ever soar!
 
 
“4. For the bright World of
Pure and boundless Love
What hast thou found? alas! a narrow room!
Put out that Light,
Restore thy Soul its Sight,
For better ’tis to dwell in outward Gloom,
Than thus, by the vile Body’s eye,
To rob the Soul of its Infinity!
 
 
“5. Love, Love has Wings, and he
Soon out of Sight will flee,
Lost in far Ether to the sensual Eye,
But the Soul’s Vision true
Can track him, yea, up to
The Presence and the Throne of the Most High:
For thence he is, and tho’ he dwell below,
To the Soul only he his genuine Form will show!”
 

Mr. Ellison was a boy of twenty-three when he wrote this. That, with so much command of expression and of measure, he should run waste and formless and even void, as he does in other parts of his volumes, is very mysterious and very distressing.

How we became possessed of the poetical Epistle from “E. V. K. to his Friend in Town,” is more easily asked than answered. We avow ourselves in the matter to have acted for once on M. Proudhon’s maxim – “La propriété c’est le vol.” We merely say, in our defence, that it is a shame in “E. V. K.,” be he who he may, to hide his talent in a napkin, or keep it for his friends alone. It is just such men and such poets as he that we most need at present, sober-minded and sound-minded and well-balanced, whose genius is subject to their judgment, and who have genius and judgment to begin with – a part of the poetical stock in trade with which many of our living writers are not largely furnished. The Epistle is obviously written quite off-hand, but it is the off-hand of a master, both as to material and workmanship. He is of the good old manly, classical school. His thoughts have settled and cleared themselves before forming into the mould of verse. They are in the style of Stewart Rose’s vers de société, but have more of the graphic force and deep feeling and fine humor of Crabbe and Cowper in their substance, with a something of their own which is to us quite as delightful. But our readers may judge. After upbraiding, with much wit, a certain faithless town-friend for not making out his visit, he thus describes his residence: —

 
“Though its charms be few,
The place will please you, and may profit too; —
My house, upon the hillside built, looks down
On a neat harbor and a lively town.
Apart, ’mid screen of trees, it stands, just where
We see the popular bustle, but not share.
Full in our front is spread a varied scene —
A royal ruin, gray, or clothed with green,
Church spires, tower, docks, streets, terraces, and trees,
Back’d by green fields, which mount by due degrees
Into brown uplands, stretching high away
To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray.
Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea
Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay,
Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar,
And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar.”
 

Then follows a long passage of great eloquence, truth, and wit, directed against the feverish, affected, unwholesome life in town, before which he fears

 
“Even he, my friend, the man whom once I knew,
Surrounded by blue women and pale men,”
 

has fallen a victim; and then concludes with these lines, which it would not be easy to match for everything that constitutes good poetry. As he writes he chides himself for suspecting his friend; and at that moment (it seems to have been written on Christmas day) he hears the song of a thrush, and forthwith he “bursts into a song,” as full-voiced, as native, as sweet and strong, as that of his bright-eyed feathered friend.

 
“But, hark
that sound! the mavis! can it be?
Once more! It is. High perched on yon bare tree,
He starts the wondering winter with his trill;
Or by that sweet sun westering o’er the hill
Allured, or for he thinks melodious mirth
Due to the holy season of Christ’s birth. —
And hark! as his clear fluting fills the air,
Low broken notes and twitterings you may hear
From other emulous birds, the brakes among;
Fain would they also burst into a song;
But winter warns, and muffling up their throats,
They liquid – for the spring – preserve their notes.
O sweet preluding! having heard that strain,
How dare I lift my dissonant voice again?
Let me be still, let me enjoy the time,
Bothering myself or thee no more with rugged rhyme.”
 

This author must not be allowed to “muffle up his throat,” and keep his notes for some imaginary and far-off spring. He has not the excuse of the mavis. He must give us more of his own “clear fluting.” Let him, with that keen, kindly and thoughtful eye, look from his retreat, as Cowper did, upon the restless, noisy world he has left, seeing the popular bustle, not sharing it, and let his pen record in such verses as these what his understanding and his affections think and feel and his imagination informs, and we shall have something in verse not unlike the letters from Olney. There is one line which deserves to be immortalized over the cherished bins of our wine-fanciers, where repose their

 
“Dear prisoned spirits of the impassioned grape.”
 

What is good makes us think of what is better, as well, and it is to be hoped more, than of what is worse. There is no sweetness so sweet as that of a large and deep nature; there is no knowledge so good, so strengthening as that of a great mind, which is forever filling itself afresh. “Out of the eater comes forth meat; out of the strong comes forth sweetness.” Here is one of such “dulcedines veræ” – the sweetness of a strong man: —

 
“Now came still evening on, and twilight gray
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompany’d; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale;
She all night long her amorous descant sung;
Silence was pleased: now glow’d the firmament
With living saphirs; Hesperus that led
The starry host rode brightest, till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen unveil’d her peerless light,
And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.”
 

Were we inclined to do anything but enjoy this and be thankful – giving ourselves up to its gentleness, informing ourselves with its quietness and beauty, – we would note the simplicity, the neutral tints, the quietness of its language, the “sober livery” in which its thoughts are clad. In the first thirty-eight words, twenty-nine are monosyllables. Then there is the gradual way in which the crowning fantasy is introduced. It comes upon us at once, and yet not wholly unexpected; it “sweetly creeps” into our “study of imagination;” it lives and moves, but it is a moving that is “delicate;” it flows in upon us incredibili lenitate. “Evening” is a matter of fact, and its stillness too – a time of the day; and “twilight” is little more. We feel the first touch of spiritual life in “her sober livery,” and bolder and deeper in “all things clad.” Still we are not deep, the real is not yet transfigured and transformed, and we are brought back into it after being told that “Silence accompanied,” by the explanatory “for,” and the bit of sweet natural history of the beasts and birds. The mind dilates and is moved, its eye detained over the picture; and then comes that rich, “thick warbled note” – “all but the wakeful nightingale;” this fills and informs the ear, making it also “of apprehension more quick,” and we are prepared now for the great idea coming “into the eye and prospect of our soul” – SILENCE WAS PLEASED! There is nothing in all poetry above this. Still evening and twilight gray are now Beings, coming on, and walking over the earth like queens, “with Silence,”

 
“Admiration’s speaking’st tongue,”
 

as their pleased companion. All is “calm and free,” and “full of life,” it is a “Holy Time.” What a picture! – what simplicity of means! what largeness and perfectness of effect! – what knowledge and love of nature! what supreme art! – what modesty and submission! what self-possession! – what plainness, what selectness of speech! “As is the height, so is the depth. The intensities must be at once opposite and equal. As the liberty, so the reverence for law. As the independence, so must be the seeing and the service, and the submission to the Supreme Will. As the ideal genius and the originality, so must be the resignation to the real world, the sympathy and the intercommunion with Nature.” —Coleridge’s Posthumous Tract “The Idea of Life.”

Since writing the above, our friend ”E. V. K.” has shown himself curiously unaffected by “that last infirmity of noble minds,” – his “clear spirit” heeds all too little its urgent “spur.” The following sonnets are all we can pilfer from him. They are worth the stealing: —

An Argument in Rhyme

I

 
“Things that now are beget the things to be,
As they themselves were gotten by things past;
Thou art a sire, who yesterday but wast
A child like him now prattling on thy knee;
And he in turn ere long shall offspring see.
Effects at first, seem causes at the last,
Yet only seem; when off their veil is cast,
All speak alike of mightier energy,
Received and pass’d along. The life that flows
Through space and time, bursts in a loftier source.
What’s spaced and timed is bounded, therefore shows
A power beyond, a timeless, spaceless force,
Templed in that infinitude, before
Whose light-veil’d porch men wonder and adore.
 

II

 
“Wonder! but – for we cannot comprehend,
Dare not to doubt. Man, know thyself! and know
That, being what thou art, it must be so.
We creatures are, and it were to transcend
The limits of our being, and ascend
Above the Infinite, if we could show
All that He is and how things from Him flow.
Things and their laws by Man are grasp’d and kenn’d,
But creatures must no more; and Nature’s must
Is Reason’s choice; for could we all reveal
Of God and acts creative, doubt were just.
Were these conceivable, they were not real.
Here, ignorance man’s sphere of being suits,
’Tis knowledge self, or of her richest fruits.
 

III

 
“Then rest here, brother! and within the veil
Boldly thine anchor cast. What though thy boat
No shoreland sees, but undulates afloat
On soundless depths; securely fold thy sail.
Ah! not by daring prow and favoring gale
Man threads the gulfs of doubting and despond,
And gains a rest in being unbeyond,
Who roams the furthest, surest is to fail;
Knowing nor what to seek, nor how to find.
Not far but near, about us, yea within,
Lieth the infinite life. The pure in mind
Dwell in the Presence, to themselves akin;
And lo! thou sick and health-imploring soul,
He stands beside thee – touch, and thou art whole.”
 

DR. CHALMERS

“Fervet immensusque ruit.” —Hor.

 
“His memory long will live alone
In all our hearts, as mournful light
That broods above the fallen sun,
And dwells in heaven half the night.”
 

Tennyson.

“He was not one man, he was a thousand men.” —Sydney Smith.

DR. CHALMERS

When, towards the close of some long summer day, we come suddenly, and, as we think, before his time, upon the broad sun, “sinking down in his tranquillity” into the unclouded west, we cannot keep our eyes from the great spectacle, – and when he is gone the shadow of him haunts our sight: we see everywhere, – upon the spotless heaven, upon the distant mountains, upon the fields, and upon the road at our feet, – that dim, strange, changeful image; and if our eyes shut, to recover themselves, we still find in them, like a dying flame, or like a gleam in a dark place, the unmistakable phantom of the mighty orb that has set, – and were we to sit down, as we have often done, and try to record by pencil or by pen, our impression of that supreme hour, still would IT be there. We must have patience with our eye, it will not let the impression go, – that spot on which the radiant disk was impressed, is insensible to all other outward things, for a time: its best relief is, to let the eye wander vaguely over earth and sky, and repose itself on the mild shadowy distance.

So it is when a great and good and beloved man departs, sets – it may be suddenly – and to us who know not the times and the seasons, too soon. We gaze eagerly at his last hours, and when he is gone, never to rise again on our sight, we see his image wherever we go, and in whatsoever we are engaged, and if we try to record by words our wonder, our sorrow, and our affection, we cannot see to do it, for the “idea of his life” is forever coming into our “study of imagination “ – into all our thoughts, and we can do little else than let our mind, in a wise passiveness, hush itself to rest. The sun returns – he knows his rising —

 
“To-morrow he repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky;”
 

but man lieth down, and riseth not again till the heavens are no more. Never again will he whose “Meditations” are now before us, lift up the light of his countenance upon us.

We need not say we look upon him, as a great man, as a good man, as a beloved man, —quis desiderio sit pudor tam cari capitis? We cannot now go very curiously to work, to scrutinize the composition of his character, – we cannot take that large, free, genial nature to pieces, and weigh this and measure that, and sum up and pronounce; we are too near as yet to him, and to his loss, he is too dear to us to be so handled. “His death,” to use the pathetic words of Hartley Coleridge, “is a recent sorrow; his image still lives in eyes that weep for him.” The prevailing feeling is, – He is gone – “abiit ad plures– he has gone over to the majority, he has joined the famous nations of the dead.”

It is no small loss to the world, when one of its master spirits – one of its great lights – a king among the nations – leaves it. A sun is extinguished; a great attractive, regulating power is withdrawn. For though it be a common, it is also a natural thought, to compare a great man to the sun; it is in many respects significant. Like the sun, he rules his day, and he is “for a sign and for seasons, and for days and for years;” he enlightens, quickens, attracts, and leads after him his host – his generation.

To pursue our image. When the sun sets to us, he rises elsewhere – he goes on rejoicing, like a strong man, running his race. So does a great man: when he leaves us and our concerns – he rises elsewhere; and we may reasonably suppose that one who has in this world played a great part in its greatest histories – who has through a long life been preëminent for promoting the good of men and the glory of God – will be looked upon with keen interest, when he joins the company of the immortals. They must have heard of his fame; they may in their ways have seen and helped him already.

Every one must have trembled when reading that passage in Isaiah, in which Hell is described as moved to meet Lucifer at his coming: there is not in human language anything more sublime in conception, more exquisite in expression; it has on it the light of the terrible crystal. But may we not reverse the scene? May we not imagine, when a great and good man – a son of the morning – enters on his rest, that Heaven would move itself to meet him at his coming? That it would stir up its dead, even all the chief ones of the earth, and that the kings of the nations would arise each one from his throne to welcome their brother? that those who saw him would “narrowly consider him,” and say, “is this he who moved nations, enlightened and bettered his fellows, and whom the great Taskmaster welcomes with ‘Well done!’”

We cannot help following him, whose loss we now mourn, into that region, and figuring to ourselves his great, childlike spirit, when that unspeakable scene bursts upon his view, when, as by some inward, instant sense, he is conscious of God – of the immediate presence of the All-seeing Unseen; when he beholds “His honorable, true, and only Son,” face to face, enshrined in “that glorious form, that light unsufferable, and that far-beaming blaze of majesty,” that brightness of His glory, that express image of His person; when he is admitted into the goodly fellowship of the apostles – the glorious company of the prophets – the noble army of martyrs – the general assembly of just men – and beholds with his loving eyes the myriads of “little ones,” outnumbering their elders as the dust of stars with which the galaxy is filled exceeds in multitude the hosts of heaven.

What a change! death the gate of life – a second birth, in the twinkling of an eye: this moment, weak, fearful, in the amazement of death; the next, strong, joyful, – at rest, – all things new! To adopt his own words: all his life, up to the last, “knocking at a door not yet opened, with an earnest indefinite longing, – his very soul breaking for the longing, – drinking of water, and thirsting again” – and then – suddenly and at once-a door opened into heaven, and the Master heard saying, “Come in, and come up hither!” drinking of the river of life, clear as crystal, of which if a man drink he will never thirst, – being filled with all the fulness of God!

Dr. Chalmers was a ruler among men: this we know historically; this every man who came within his range felt at once. He was like Agamemnon, a native ἄναζ ἀνδρῶν, and with all his homeliness of feature and deportment, and his perfect simplicity of expression, there was about him “that divinity that doth hedge a king.” You felt a power, in him, and going from him, drawing you to him in spite of yourself. He was in this respect a solar man, he drew after him his own firmament of planets. They, like all free agents, had their centrifugal forces acting ever towards an independent, solitary course, but the centripetal also was there, and they moved with and around their imperial sun, – gracefully or not, willingly or not, as the case might be, but there was no breaking loose: they again, in their own spheres of power, might have their attendant moons, but all were bound to the great massive luminary in the midst.

There is to us a continual mystery in this power of one man over another. We find it acting everywhere, with the simplicity, the ceaselessness, the energy of gravitation; and we may be permitted to speak of this influence as obeying similar conditions; it is proportioned to bulk– for we hold to the notion of a bigness in souls as well as bodies – one soul differing from another in quantity and momentum as well as in quality and force, and its intensity increases by nearness. There is much in what Jonathan Edwards says of one spiritual essence having more being than another, and in Dr. Chalmers’s question, “Is he a man of wecht?”

But when we meet a solar man, of ample nature – soul, body, and spirit; when we find him from his earliest years moving among his fellows like a king, moving them whether they will or not – this feeling of mystery is deepened; and though we would not, like some men (who should know better), worship the creature and convert a hero into a god, we do feel more than in other cases the truth, that it is the inspiration of the Almighty which has given to that man understanding, and that all power, all energy, all light, come to him, from the First and the Last – the Living One. God comes to be regarded by us, in this instance, as he ought always to be, “the final centre of repose” – the source of all being, of all life – the Terminus ad quem and the Terminus a quo. And assuredly, as in the firmament that simple law of gravitation reigns supreme – making it indeed a kosmos– majestic, orderly, comely in its going – ruling, and binding not the less the fiery and nomadic comets, than the gentle, punctual moons – so certainly, and to us moral creatures to a degree transcendantly more important, does the whole intelligent universe move around and move towards and in the Father of Lights.

It would be well if the world would, among the many other uses they make of its great men, make more of this, – that they are manifestors of God – revealers of His will – vessels of His omnipotence – and are among the very chiefest of His ways and works.

As we have before said, there is a perpetual wonder in this power of one man over his fellows, especially when we meet with it in a great man. You see its operations constantly in history, and through it the Great Ruler has worked out many of His greatest and strangest acts. But however we may understand the accessory conditions by which the one man rules the many, and controls, and fashions them to his purposes, and transforms them into his likeness – multiplying as it were himself – there remains at the bottom of it all a mystery – a reaction between body and soul that we cannot explain. Generally, however, we find accompanying its manifestation, a capacious understanding – a strong will – an emotional nature quick, powerful, urgent, undeniable, in perpetual communication with the energetic will and the large resolute intellect – and a strong, hearty, capable body; a countenance and person expressive of this combination – the mind finding its way at once and in full force to the face, to the gesture, to every act of the body. He must have what is called a “presence;” not that he must be great in size, beautiful, or strong; but he must be expressive and impressive – his outward man must communicate to the beholder at once and without fail, something of indwelling power, and he must be and act as one. You may in your mind analyze him into his several parts; but practically he acts in everything with his whole soul and his whole self; whatsoever his hand finds to do, he does it with his might. Luther, Moses, David, Mahomet, Cromwell – all verified these conditions.

And so did Dr. Chalmers. There was something about his whole air and manner, that disposed you at the very first to make way where he went – he held you before you were aware. That this depended fully as much upon the activity and the quantity – if we may so express ourselves – of his affections, upon that combined action of mind and body which we call temperament, and upon a straightforward, urgent will, as upon what is called the pure intellect, will be generally allowed; but with all this, he could not have been and done, what he was and did, had he not had an understanding, in vigor and in capacity, worthy of its great and ardent companions. It was large, and free, mobile, and intense, rather than penetrative, judicial, clear, or fine, – so that in one sense he was more a man to make others act than think; but his own actings had always their origin in some fixed, central, inevitable proposition, as he would call it, and he began his onset with stating plainly, and with lucid calmness, what he held to be a great seminal truth; from this he passed at once, not into exposition, but into illustration and enforcement – into, if we may make a word, overwhelming insistance. Something was to be done, rather than explained.