P. 52. Carlyle.—In The Hero as Priest Carlyle wrote of Luther's written works: 'The dialect of these speculations is now grown obsolete for us; but one still reads them with a singular attraction. And indeed the mere grammatical diction is still legible enough; Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest; his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He flashes-out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humour too, nay, tender affection, nobleness, and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one.'
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanter's wand!—itself a nothing.—
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Caesars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless!—Take away the sword—
States can be saved without it!
Lytton. Richelieu, Act II, sc. ii.
P. 53. Macaulay.—'Macaulay is like a book in breeches.'—Sydney Smith.
P. 53. Maurice.—The first Ptolemy founded the famous Alexandrian Library which is supposed to have been partly destroyed by Christian fanatics in 391 A.D., the Arabs in 641 completing the work of destruction.
P. 57. Fuller.—'Fuller's language!' Coleridge writes: 'Grant me patience, Heaven! A tithe of his beauties would be sold cheap for a whole library of our classical writers, from Addison to Johnson and Junius inclusive. And Bishop Nicolson!—a painstaking old charwoman of the Antiquarian and Rubbish Concern! The venerable rust and dust of the whole firm are not worth an ounce of Fuller's earth!'
The rest of this essay will be found on page [79]. The learned man referred to in the last paragraph is Erasmus.
P. 58. Browne.—Pineda in Monarchica Ecclesiastica mentions 1,040 authors. See the note above on Maurice.
P. 60. Addison.—'The multiplication of readers is the multiplication of loaves. On the day when Christ created that symbol, he caught a glimpse of printing. His miracle is this marvel. Behold a book. I will nourish with it five thousand souls—a million souls—all humanity. In the action of Christ bringing forth the loaves, there is Gutenberg bringing forth books. One sower heralds the other.... Gutenberg is for ever the auxiliary of life; he is the permanent fellow-workman in the great work of civilization. Nothing is done without him. He has marked the transition of the man-slave to the free man. Try and deprive civilization of him, you become Egypt.'—Victor Hugo on Shakespeare.
P. 61. De Quincey.—'The few shelves which would hold all the true classics extant might receive as many more of the like as there is any chance that the next two or three centuries could produce, without burthening the select and leisurely scholar with a sense of how much he had to read.'—C. Patmore. Principle in Art: William Barnes.