ould not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his
savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among
the elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic
Chillingworths, diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of
chaotic confusion, visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost
semi-madness; and yet such a clear determinate man's-energy working in
the heart of that. A kind of chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight
and fire, working in such an element of boundless hypochondria,
_un_formed black of darkness! And yet withal this hypochondria, what 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
logicizing; 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, tho 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,
si