The wonder of the book is its superior intelligence. In the menstruum
of this man's wit, the past and the present ages, and their religions,
politics, and modes of thinking, are dissolved into archetypes and
ideas. What new mythologies sail through his head! The Greeks said,
that Alexander went as far as Chaos; Goethe went, only the other day,
as far; and one step farther he hazarded, and brought himself safe
back. There is a heart-cheering freedom in his speculation. The immense
horizon which journeys with us lends its majesties to trifles, and to
matters of convenience and necessity, as to solemn and festal
performances. He was the soul of his century. If that was learned, and
had become, by population, compact organization, and drill of parts,
one great Exploring Expedition, accumulating a glut of facts and fruits
too fast for any hitherto-existing savants to classify, this man's
mind had ample chambers for the distribution of all. He had a power
to unite the detached atoms again by their own law. He has clothed our
modern existence with poetry. Amid littleness and detail, he detected
the Genius of life, the old cunning Proteus, nestling close beside us,
and showed that the dullness and prose we ascribe to the age was only
another of his masks:--"His very flight is presence in disguise:" that
he had put off a gay uniform for a fatigue dress, and was not a whit
less vivacious or rich in Liverpool or the Hague, than once in Rome
or Antioch.
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