Logic, useful as it is, as
a help to reasoning, is but the dead body of thought, as Novalis
designates it, and has no place in the inspired regions where the
prophets and the bards reside.
Carlyle's fame, however, had not reached its culminating point when
Emerson visited him. The English are a slow, unimpressionable people,
not given to hasty judgments, nor too much nor too sudden praise;
requiring first to take the true altitude of a man, to measure him by
severe tests; often grudging him his proper and natural advantages and
talents, buffeting and abusing him in a merciless and sometimes an
unreasoning and unreasonable manner, allowing him now and then,
however, a sunbeam for his consolation, until at last they come to a
settled understanding of him, and he is generously praised and abused
into the sanctuary of their worthies. This was not the case, however,
at present, with Carlyle; for although he had the highest recognitions
from some of those who constitute the flower and chivalry of England,
he was far better known and more widely read in America than in his
own country.
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