unknown to me; that others, in spite of my failures, begin to understand me, and are ready to follow; and that a certain power is indeed already in my hands, woven widely into the threads of many human lives; which power, if I now laid down, that line (which I have always kept the murmur of in my ears, for warning, since first I read it thirty years ago,)—
"Che fece per viltate’l gran rifiuto,"[1]
would be finally and fatally true of me.
Fourthly, not only is that saying of Bacon's of great comfort to me, "therefore extreme lovers of their country, or masters, were never fortunate; neither can they be, for when a man placeth his thoughts without himself, he goeth not his own way,"[2] for truly I have always loved my masters. Turner, Tintoret, and Carlyle, to the exclusion of my own thoughts; and my country more than my own garden: but also, I do not find in the reading of history that any victory worth having was ever won without cost; and I observe that too open and early prosperity is rarely the way to it.
But lastly, and chiefly. If there be any truth in the vital doctrines of Christianity whatsoever,—and
- ↑ Inferno, III. 60. I fear that few modern readers of Dante understand the dreadful meaning of this hellish outer district, or suburb, full of the refuse or worthless scum of Humanity—such numbers that "non haverei creduto, che morte tanta n'havesse disfatta,"—who are stung to bloody torture by insect?, and whose blood and tears together—the best that human souls can give—are sucked up, on the hell-ground, by worms.
- ↑ Essay XI.
