Heroism, ever transacted itself on this Earth; and it lies as good as lost to us; overwhelmed under such an avalanche of Human Stupidities as no Heroism before ever did. Intrinsically and extrinsically it may be considered inaccessible to these generations. Intrinsically, the spiritual purport of it has become inconceivable, incredible to the modern mind. Extrinsically, the documents and records of it, scattered waste as a shoreless chaos, are not legible. They lie there, printed, written, to the extent of tons and square miles, as shot-rubbish; unedited, unsorted, not so much as indexed; full of every conceivable confusion;—yielding light to very few; yielding darkness, in several sorts, to very many. Dull Pedantry, conceited idle Dilettantism,—prurient Stupidity in what shape soever,—is darkness and not light! There are from Thirty to Fifty Thousand unread Pamphlets of the Civil War in the British Museum alone: huge piles of mouldering wreck, wherein, at the rate of perhaps one pennyweight per ton, lie things memorable. They lie preserved there, waiting happier days; under present conditions they cannot, except for idle purposes, for dilettante excerpts and suchlike, be got examined. The Rushworths, Whitlockes, Nalsons, Thurloes; enormous folios, these and many others have been printed, and some of them again printed, but never yet edited,—edited as you edit wagonloads of broken bricks and dry mortar, simply by tumbling up the wagon! Not one of those monstrous old volumes has so much as an available Index. It is the general rule of editing on this matter. If your editor correct the press, it is an honourable distinction to him.
‘Those dreary old records, they were compiled at first by Human Insight, in part; and in great part, by Human Stupidity withal;—but then it was by Stupidity in a laudable diligent state, and doing its best; which was something:—and, alas, they have been successively elaborated by Human Stupidity in the idle state, falling idler and idler, and only pretending to be diligent; whereby now, for us, in these late days, they have grown very dim indeed! To Dryasdust
