at
was it but the very greatness of the man? The depth and tenderness of
his wild affections: the quantity of _sympathy_ he had with
things,--the quantity of insight he would yet get into the heart of
things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this was his
hypochondria. The man's misery, as man's misery always does, came of
his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man. Sorrow-stricken,
half-distracted; the wide element of mournful _black_ enveloping
him,--wide as the world. It is the character of a prophetic man; a man
with his whole soul _seeing_, and struggling to see.

On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion
of speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the
material with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He
had _lived_ silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his
days; and in his way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or
uttering that. With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of
action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and
speak fluently enough:--he did harder things than writing of Books.
This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all
things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not speaking and
logicising; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, _Vir-tus_, manhood,
_hero_-hood, is not fair-spoken immaculate regularity; it is first of
all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ (_Taugend_, _dow_-ing or
_Dough_-tiness), Courage and the Faculty to _do_. This basis of the
matter Cromwell had in him.

One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament,
he might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be
great in extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of
what is in the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth,
sincerity are all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a
notable feature of him. All his great enterprises were commenced with
prayer. In dark inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he
used to assemble, and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some
definite resolution rose among them, some 'door of hope,' as they
would name it, disclosed itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent
prayers, and cries to the great God, to have pity on them, to make His
light shine before them. They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt
themselves to be; a little band of Christian Brothe