In his profuse and accurate imagery
is no pleasure, for there is no beauty. We wander forlorn in a lack-
lustre landscape. No bird ever sang in all these gardens of the dead.
The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the
disease, and, like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person, is a kind of
warning. I think, sometimes, he will not be read longer. His great
name will turn a sentence. His books have become a monument. His laurels
so largely mixed with cypress, a charnel-breath so mingles with the
temple incense, that boys and maids will shun the spot.
Yet, in this immolation of genius and fame at the shrine of conscience,
is a merit sublime beyond praise. He lived to purpose: he gave a
verdict. He elected goodness as the clue to which the soul must cling
in all this labyrinth of nature. Many opinions conflict as to the true
center. In the shipwreck, some cling to running rigging, some to cask
and barrel, some to spars, some to mast; the pilot chooses with
science,--I plant myself here; all will sink before this; "he comes
to land who sails with me." Do not rely on heavenly favor, or on
compassion to folly, or on prudence, on common sense, the old usage
and main chance of men; nothing can keep you,--not fate, nor health,
nor admirable intellect; none can keep you, but rectitude only,
rectitude forever and ever!--and, with a tenacity that never swerved
in all his studies, inventions, dreams, he adheres to this brave choice.
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