and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque
allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all the graces
and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded to the clearest Intellect,
alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and
soporific passages; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure
doting jargon, so often intervene! On the whole, Professor Teufelsdrockh,
is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more than
nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; the remainder are in quite
angular attitudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and
ever with this or the other tagrag hanging from them; a few even sprawl out
helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered.
Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a singular
attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole utterance of the man, like its
keynote and regulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of
Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not
without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into the
common pitch, when we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of which hum the
true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have
never fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real Humor,
which we reckon among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo of
mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks below the very lowest.

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal intercourse, do we
still lie with regard to the Professor's moral feeling. Gleams of an
ethereal love burst forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he
could clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems
as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is
so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine; shows such indifference,
malign coolness towards all that men strive after; and ever with some
half-visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere