What
has friendship so signaled as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue
is in us? We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life.
We are piqued to some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the
railroad will not again shame us.
Under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as I think, which
all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from Coriolanus and Gracchus,
down to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear the
shouts in the street! The people cannot see him enough. They delight
in a man. Here is a head and a trunk! What a front! What eyes! Atlantean
shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal inward force to
guide the great machine! This pleasure of full expression to that
which, in their private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed,
runs, also, much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in
literary genius. Nothing is kept back. There is fire enough to fuse
the mountain of ore. Shakspeare's principal merit may be conveyed, in
saying that he, of all men, best understands the English language, and
can say what he will. Yet these unchoked channels and floodgates of
expression are only health or fortunate constitution.
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