Not Isaiah himself more
scornful, more threatening: "The crown of pride, the drunkards of
Ephraim, shall be trodden under feet: And the glorious beauty which
is on the head of the fat valley shall be a fading flower." (The word
prophecy is much misused; it seems narrow'd to prediction merely. That
is not the main sense of the Hebrew word translated "prophet;" it
means one whose mind bubbles up and pours forth as a fountain, from
inner, divine spontaneities revealing God. Prediction is a very minor
part of prophecy. The great matter is to reveal and outpour the
God-like suggestions pressing for birth in the soul. This is briefly
the doctrine of the Friends or Quakers.)
Then the simplicity and amid ostensible frailty the towering strength
of this man--a hardy oak knot, you could never wear out--an old
farmer dress'd in brown clothes, and not handsome--his very foibles
fascinating. Who cares that he wrote about Dr. Francia, and "Shooting
Niagara"--and "the Nigger Question,"--and didn't at all admire our
United States? (I doubt if he ever thought or said half as bad words
about us as we deserve.) How he splashes like leviathan in the seas of
modern literature and politics! Doubtless, respecting the latter, one
needs first to realize, from actual observation, the squalor, vice and
doggedness ingrain'd in the bulk-population of the British islands,
with the red tape, the fatuity, the flunkeyism everywhere, to
understand the last meaning in his pages. Accordingly, though he was
no chartist or radical, I consider Carlyle's by far the most indignant
comment or protest anent the fruits of feudalism to-day in Great
Britain--the increasing poverty and degradation of the homeless,
landless twenty millions, while a few thousands, or rather a few
hundreds, possess the entire soil, the money, and the fat berths.
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