grows men and women. His brain is the ultimate brain. He is no arguer, he
is judgment. He judges not as the judge judges, but as the sun falling
around a helpless thing. As he sees the farthest, he has the most faith.
His thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. In the talk on the soul
and eternity and God, off of his equal plane, he is silent. He sees
eternity less like a play with a prologue and denouement: he sees eternity
in men and women,--he does not see men and women as dreams or dots. Faith
is the antiseptic of the soul,--it pervades the common people and preserves
them: they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is
that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person
that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. The poet
sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and
perfect as the greatest artist. The power to destroy or remould is freely
used by him, but never the power of attack. What is past is past. If he
does not expose superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes,
he is not what is wanted. The presence of the greatest poet conquers; not
parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that
way, see after him! there is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy
or cunning or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or colour, or
delusion of hell or the necessity of hell; and no man thenceforward shall
be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin.

The greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into
anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and
life of the universe. He is a seer--he is individual--he is complete in
himself: the others are as good as he; only he sees it, and they do not. He
is not one of the chorus--he does not stop for any regulation--he is the
President of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest he does to the
rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other senses
corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own, and