with reverence, with pity, with awe." That Church of St. Clement Danes,

where Johnson still _worshipped_ in the era of Voltaire, is to me a
venerable place.

It was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort
from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificialdialect, that

Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects "artificial"? Artificial
things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly

_shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of
them, _true_. What we call "Formulas" are not in their origin bad; they

are indispensably good. Formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man
is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways,

leading toward some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent.
Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnestimpulse, finds out a way

of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the
Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was

needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought
that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that;

these are his footsteps, the beginning of a "Path." And now see: the
second men travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the

_easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements,
with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the

Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a
broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there

remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end,
the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake

the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things
in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas

all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the
articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is

already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said,
are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's

heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant
withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and

will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this
world.--

Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his "sincerity." He has no
suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly

anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls
himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to

starve, but to live--without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him.
He does not "engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;" no, but he stands by

truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it
once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first

of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable
of being _in_sincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a

Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakablegreatness of this Mystery of
Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it

or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand
and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; unrecognized, because never

questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon:
all the Great Men I ever heard of have this as the primary material of

them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere
their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at

second-hand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have
truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. How shall he stand otherwise?

His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no
standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of

thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but I
recognize the everlasting element of _heart-sincerity_ in both; and see

with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is
as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seedfield will

_grow_.
Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all

like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a
kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little

is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching.
"A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not sink

yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched
god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: how

could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and
taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great

Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the
cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn

shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, I
call these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest

perhaps that was possible at that time.
Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now as

it were disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's
opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of

living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books
the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart;--ever

welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are
_sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram

style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping
or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now;

sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents
of it: all this you will put up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not,

has always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with
_nothing_ in them;--a man is a malefactor to the world who writes such!

_They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his
_Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man.

Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty,
insight and successful method, it may be called the best of all

Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands
there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically

complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.
One word, in spite of our haste, must be granted to poor Bozzy. He passes

for a mean, inflated, gluttonous creature; and was so in many senses. Yet
the fact of his reverence for Johnson will ever remain noteworthy. The

foolish conceited Scotch Laird, the most conceited man of his time,
approaching in such awe-struck attitude the great dusty irascible Pedagogue

in his mean garret there: it is a genuinereverence for Excellence; a
_worship_ for Heroes, at a time when neither Heroes nor worship were

surmised to exist. Heroes, it would seem, exist always, and a certain
worship of them! We will also take the liberty to deny altogether that of

the witty Frenchman, that no man is a Hero to his valet-de-chambre. Or if
so, it is not the Hero's blame, but the Valet's: that his soul, namely, is

a mean _valet_-soul! He expects his Hero to advance in royal
stage-trappings, with measured step, trains borne behind him, trumpets

sounding before him. It should stand rather, No man can be a _Grand-
Monarque_ to his valet-de-chambre. Strip your Louis Quatorze of his

king-gear, and there _is_ left nothing but a poor forked radish with a head
fantastically carved;--admirable to no valet. The Valet does not know a

Hero when he sees him! Alas, no: it requires a kind of _Hero_ to do
that;--and one of the world's wants, in _this_ as in other senses, is for

most part want of such.
On the whole, shall we not say, that Boswell's admiration was well

bestowed; that he could have found no soul in all England so worthy of
bending down before? Shall we not say, of this great mournful Johnson too,

that he guided his difficult confused existencewisely; led it _well_, like
a right valiant man? That waste chaos of Authorship by trade; that waste

chaos of Scepticism in religion and politics, in life-theory and
life-practice; in his poverty, in his dust and dimness, with the sick body

and the rusty coat: he made it do for him, like a brave man. Not wholly
without a loadstar in the Eternal; he had still a loadstar, as the brave

all need to have: with his eye set on that, he would change his course for
nothing in these confused vortices of the lower sea of Time. "To the

Spirit of Lies, bearing death and hunger, he would in nowise strike his
flag." Brave old Samuel: _ultimus Romanorum_!

Of Rousseau and his Heroism I cannot say so much. He is not what I call a
strong man. A morbid, excitable, spasmodic man; at best, intense rather

than strong. He had not "the talent of Silence," an invaluabletalent;
which few Frenchmen, or indeed men of any sort in these times, excel in!

The suffering man ought really "to consume his own smoke;" there is no good
in emitting _smoke_ till you have made it into _fire_,--which, in the

metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming! Rousseau has not
depth or width, not calm force for difficulty; the first characteristic of

true greatness. A fundamental mistake to call vehemence and rigidity
strength! A man is not strong who takes convulsion-fits; though six men

cannot hold him then. He that can walk under the heaviest weight without
staggering, he is the strong man. We need forever, especially in these