s
of Nature once more in an age of Artifice; once more, Original Men.

As for Johnson, I have always considered him to be, by nature, one
of our great English souls. A strong and noble man; so much left
undeveloped in him to the last: in a kindlier element what might he not
have been,--Poet, Priest, sovereign Ruler! On the whole, a man must not
complain of his "element," of his "time," or the like; it is thriftless
work doing so. His time is bad: well then, he is there to make it
better!--Johnson's youth was poor, isolated, hopeless, very miserable.
Indeed, it does not seem possible that, in any the favorablest outward
circumstances, Johnson's life could have been other than a painful one.
The world might have had more of profitable _work_ out of him, or less;
but his _effort_ against the world's work could never have been a light
one. Nature, in return for his nobleness, had said to him, Live in an
element of diseased sorrow. Nay, perhaps the sorrow and the nobleness
were intimately and even inseparably connected with each other. At all
events, poor Johnson had to go about girt with continual hypochondria,
physical and spiritual pain. Like a Hercules with the burning
Nessus'-shirt on him, which shoots in on him dull incurable misery: the
Nessus'-shirt not to be stript off, which is his own natural skin! In
this manner _he_ had to live. Figure him there, with his scrofulous
diseases, with his great greedy heart, and unspeakable chaos of
thoughts; stalking mournful as a stranger in this Earth; eagerly
devouring what spiritual thing he could come at: school-languages
and other merely grammatical stuff, if there were nothing better! The
largest soul that was in all England; and provision made for it of
"fourpence-halfpenny a day." Yet a giant invincible soul; a true man's.
One remembers always that story of the shoes at Oxford: the rough,
seamy-faced, rawboned College Servitor stalking about, in winter-season,
with his shoes worn out; how the charitable Gentleman Commoner secretly
places a new pair at his door; and the rawboned Servitor, lifting them,
looking at them near, with his dim eyes, with what thoughts,--pitches
them out of window! Wet feet, mud, frost, hunger or what you will; but
not beggary: we cannot stand beggary! Rude stubborn self-help here;
a whole world of squalor, rudeness, confused misery and want, yet of
nobleness and manfulness withal. It is a type of the man's life,
this pitching away of the shoes. An