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 nondescript, extant in
the world to amuse idleness, and have a few coins and applauses thrown
him, 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 teaches, 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 honorable, ever the highest; and was once
well known to be the highest. He is uttering forth, in such 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, in the True, Divine
and Eternal, which exists always, unseen to most, under the Temporary,
Trivial: his being is in that; he declares that abroad, by act or speech
as it may be in declaring himself abroad. His life, as we said before,
is a piece of the everlasting heart of Nature herself: all men's life
is,--but the weak many