November 1. 1833
Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare — Dryden — Dr. Johnson — Scott’s Novels — Scope of Christianity
Compare Nestor, Ajax, Achilles, &c. in the Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare with their namesakes in the Iliad. The old heroes seem all to have been at school ever since. I scarcely know a more striking instance of the strength and pregnancy of the Gothic mind.
Dryden’s genius was of that sort which catches fire by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by driving fast.
Dr. Johnson seems to have been really more powerful in discoursing vivâ voce in conversation than with his pen in hand. It seems as if the excitement of company called something like reality and consecutiveness into his reasonings, which in his writings I cannot see. His antitheses are almost always verbal only; and sentence after sentence in the Rambler may be pointed out to which you cannot attach any definite meaning whatever. In his political pamphlets there is more truth of expression than in his other works, for the same reason that his conversation is better than his writings in general. He was more excited and in earnest.
When I am very ill indeed, I can read Scott’s novels, and they are almost the only books I can then read. I cannot at such times read the Bible; my mind reflects on it, but I can’t bear the open page.
Unless Christianity be viewed and felt in a high and comprehensive way, how large a portion of our intellectual and moral nature does it leave without object and action!
Let a young man separate I from Me as far as he possibly can, and remove Me till it is almost lost in the remote distance. “I am me,” is as bad a fault in intellectuals and morals as it is in grammar, whilst none but one—God— can say, “I am I,” or “That I am.”