"Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank!"
In him, even
"thickheads ought to recognize
The Devil, that old stager, at his trick
Of general utility, who leads
Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!"A
A: Red Cotton Nightcap Country.
For the bold sinner, who chooses and sustains his part to the end, the poet has hope. Indeed, the resolute choice is itself the beginning of hope; for, let a man only give himself to anything, wreak himself on the world in the intensity of his hate, set all sail before the gusts of passion and "range from Helen to Elvire, frenetic to be free," let him rise into a decisive self-assertion against the stable order of the moral world, and he cannot fail to discover the nature of the task he has undertaken, and the meaning of the power without, against which he has set himself. If there be sufficient strength in a man to vent himself in action, and "try conclusions with the world," he will then learn that it has another destiny than to be the instrument of evil. Self-assertion taken by itself is good; indeed, it is the very law of every life, human and other.