Over and above the merit of his particular discoveries, is the capital
merit of his self-equality. A drop of water has the properties of the
sea, but cannot exhibit a storm. There is beauty of a concert, as well
as of a flute; strength of a host, as well as of a hero; and, in
Swedenborg, those who are best acquainted with modern books, will most
admire the merit of mass. One of the missouriums and mastodons of
literature, he is not to be measured by whole colleges of ordinary
scholars. His stalwart presence would flutter the gowns of an
university. Our books are false by being fragmentary; their sentences
are _bon mots_, and not parts of natural discourse; childish expressions
of surprise or pleasure in nature; or, worse, owing a brief notoriety to
their petulance, or aversion from the order of nature,--being some
curiosity or oddity, designedly not in harmony with nature, and
purposely framed to excite a surprise, as jugglers do by concealing
their means. But Swedenborg is systematic, and respective of the world
in every sentence; all the means are orderly given; his faculties work
with astronomic punctuality, and this admirable writing is pure from all
pertness or egotism.
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