inspiration that was in him by Printed Books, and find
place and subsistence by what the world would please to give him for
doing that. Much had been sold and bought, and left to make its own
bargain in the marketplace; but the inspired wisdom of a Heroic Soul
never till then, in that naked manner. He, with his copy-rights and
copy-wrongs, in his squalid garret, in his rusty coat; ruling (for
this is what he does), from his grave, after death, whole nations and
generations who would, or would not, give him bread while living,--is
a rather curious spectacle! Few shapes of Heroism can be more
unexpected.

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange
shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so
foreign is his aspect in the world! It seemed absurd to us, that men,
in their rude admiration, should take some wise great Odin for a god,
and worship him as such, some wise great Mahomet for one god-inspired,
and religiously follow his Law for twelve centuries: but that a wise
great Johnson, a Burns, a Rousseau, should be taken for some idle
non-descript, extant in the world to amuse idleness, and have a few
coins and applauses thrown in, that he might live thereby; _this_
perhaps, as before hinted, will one day seem a still absurder phasis
of things!--Meanwhile, since it is the spiritual always that
determines the material, this same Man-of-Letters Hero must be
regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be,
is the soul of all. What he teachers, the whole world will do and
make. The world's manner of dealing with him is the most significant
feature of the world's general position. Looking well at his life, we
may get a glance, as deep as is readily possible for us, into the life
of those singular centuries which have produced him, in which we
ourselves live and work.

There are genuine Men of Letters, and not genuine; as in every kind
there is a genuine and a spurious. If _Hero_ be taken to mean genuine,
then I say the Hero as Man of Letters will be found discharging a
function for us which is ever honourable, ever the highest; and was
once well known to be the highest. He is uttering-forth, in such a way
as he has, the inspired soul of him; all that a man, in any case, can
do. I say _inspired_; for what we call 'originality,' 'sincerity,'
'genius,' the heroic quality we have no good name for, signifies that.
The Hero is he who lives in the inward sphere of things