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Life of John Sterling-Part32_Thomas Carlyle(1795-1881)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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vindicating the determination he had formed to keep climbing by that

method. Poor Poem, or rather Promise of a Poem! In Sterling's brave



struggle, this little _Election_ is the highest point he fairly lived

to see attained, and openly demonstrated in print. His next public



adventure in this kind was of inferior worth; and a third, which had

perhaps intrinsically gone much higher than any of its antecessors,



was cut off as a fragment, and has not hitherto been published.

Steady courage is needed on the Poetic course, as on all courses!--



Shortly after this Publication, in the beginning of 1842, poor

Calvert, long a hopelesssufferer, was delivered by death: Sterling's



faithful fellow-pilgrim could no more attend him in his wayfarings

through this world. The weary and heavy-laden man had borne his



burden well. Sterling says of him to Hare: "Since I wrote last, I

have lost Calvert; the man with whom, of all others, I have been



during late years the most intimate. Simplicity, benevolence,

practical good sense and moral earnestness were his great unfailing



characteristics; and no man, I believe, ever possessed them more

entirely. His illness had latterly so prostrated him, both in mind



and body, that those who most loved him were most anxious for his

departure." There was something touching in this exit; in the



quenching of so kind and bright a little life under the dark billows

of death. To me he left a curious old Print of James Nayler the



Quaker, which I still affectionately preserve.

Sterling, from this greater distance, came perhaps rather seldomer to



London; but we saw him still at moderate intervals; and, through his

family here and other direct and indirect channels, were kept in



lively communication with him. Literature was still his constant

pursuit; and, with encouragement or without, Poetic composition his



chosen department therein. On the ill success of _The Election_, or

any ill success with the world, nobody ever heard him utter the least



murmur; condolence upon that or any such subject might have been a

questionable operation, by no means called for! Nay, my own approval,



higher than this of the world, had been languid, by no means

enthusiastic. But our valiant friend took all quietly; and was not to



be repulsed from his Poetics either by the world's coldness or by

mine; he labored at his _Strafford_;--determined to labor, in all



ways, till he felt the end of his tether in this direction.

He sometimes spoke, with a certain zeal, of my starting a Periodical:



Why not lift up some kind of war-flag against the obese platitudes,

and sicklysuperstitious aperies and impostures of the time? But I



had to answer, "Who will join it, my friend?" He seemed to say, "I,

for one;" and there was occasionally a transienttemptation in the



thought, but transient only. No fighting regiment, with the smallest

attempt towards drill, co-operation, commissariat, or the like



unspeakable advantages, could be raised in Sterling's time or mine;

which truly, to honest fighters, is a rather grievous want. A



grievous, but not quite a fatal one. For, failing this, failing all

things and all men, there remains the solitary battle (and were it by



the poorest weapon, the tongue only, or were it even by wise

abstinence and silence and without any weapon), such as each man for



himself can wage while he has life: an indubitable and infinitely

comfortable fact for every man! Said battle shaped itself for



Sterling, as we have long since seen, chiefly in the poetic form, in

the singing or hymning rather than the speaking form; and in that he



was cheerfully assiduous according to his light. The unfortunate

_Strafford_ is far on towards completion; a _Coeur-de-Lion_, of which



we shall hear farther, "_Coeur-de-Lion_, greatly the best of all his

Poems," unluckily not completed, and still unpublished, already hangs



in the wind.




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