And so in this Dante, as we said, had ten silent centuries, in a very strange way, found a voice. The 'Divina Commedia' is of Dante's writing; yet in truth _it_ belongs to ten Christian centuries, only the finishing of it is Dante's. So always. The craftsman there, the smith with that metal of his, with these tools, with these cunning methods,--how little of all he does is properly _his_ work! All past inventive men work there with him;--as indeed with all of us, in all things. Dante is the spokesman of the Middle Ages; the Thought they lived by stands here, in everlasting music.
Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who could 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.