Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds out a way of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that;these are his footsteps, the beginning of a "Path." And now see: the second men travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the _easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this world.--Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his "sincerity." He has no suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being particularly anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or "scholar" as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live--without stealing! A noble unconsciousness is in him.
He does not "engrave _Truth_ on his watch-seal;" no, but he stands by truth, speaks by it, works and lives by it. Thus it ever is. Think of it once more. The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being _in_sincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to _him_,--fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that. He has a basis of sincerity; unrecognized, because never questioned or capable of question. Mirabeau, Mahomet, Cromwell, Napoleon:
all the Great Men I ever heard of have this as the primary material of them. Innumerable commonplace men are debating, are talking everywhere their commonplace doctrines, which they have learned by logic, by rote, at second-hand: to that kind of man all this is still nothing. He must have truth; truth which _he_ feels to be true. How shall he stand otherwise?
His whole soul, at all moments, in all ways, tells him that there is no standing. He is under the noble necessity of being true. Johnson's way of thinking about this world is not mine, any more than Mahomet's was: but Irecognize the everlasting element of _heart-sincerity_ in both; and see with pleasure how neither of them remains ineffectual. Neither of them is as _chaff_ sown; in both of them is something which the seedfield will _grow_.
Johnson was a Prophet to his people; preached a Gospel to them,--as all like him always do. The highest Gospel he preached we may describe as a kind of Moral Prudence: "in a world where much is to be done, and little is to be known," see how you will _do_ it! A thing well worth preaching.
"A world where much is to be done, and little is to be known:" do not sink yourselves in boundless bottomless abysses of Doubt, of wretched god-forgetting Unbelief;--you were miserable then, powerless, mad: how could you _do_ or work at all? Such Gospel Johnson preached and taught;--coupled, theoretically and practically, with this other great Gospel, "Clear your mind of Cant!" Have no trade with Cant: stand on the cold mud in the frosty weather, but let it be in your own _real_ torn shoes: "that will be better for you," as Mahomet says! I call this, Icall these two things _joined together_, a great Gospel, the greatest perhaps that was possible at that time.
Johnson's Writings, which once had such currency and celebrity, are now as it were disowned by the young generation. It is not wonderful; Johnson's opinions are fast becoming obsolete: but his style of thinking and of living, we may hope, will never become obsolete. I find in Johnson's Books the indisputablest traces of a great intellect and great heart;--ever welcome, under what obstructions and perversions soever. They are _sincere_ words, those of his; he means things by them. A wondrous buckram style,--the best he could get to then; a measured grandiloquence, stepping or rather stalking along in a very solemn way, grown obsolete now;sometimes a tumid _size_ of phraseology not in proportion to the contents of it: all this you will put up with. For the phraseology, tumid or not, has always _something within it_. So many beautiful styles and books, with _nothing_ in them;--a man is a malefactor to the world who writes such!
_They_ are the avoidable kind!--Had Johnson left nothing but his _Dictionary_, one might have traced there a great intellect, a genuine man.
Looking to its clearness of definition, its general solidity, honesty, insight and successful method, it may be called the best of all Dictionaries. There is in it a kind of architectural nobleness; it stands there like a great solid square-built edifice, finished, symmetrically complete: you judge that a true Builder did it.