温馨提示：本站仅提供公开网络链接索引服务，不存储、不篡改任何第三方内容，所有内容版权归原作者所有
AI智能索引来源：http://www.wehd.com/373/941.html
点击访问原文链接

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Men of Books. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

进入原网站 导航首页
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882). Men of Books. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. Men of Books
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) From “Hyperion.”

WHAT a strange picture a university presents to the imagination. The lives of scholars in their cloistered stillness;—literary men of retired habits, and professors who study sixteen hours a day, and never see the world but on a Sunday. Nature has, no doubt, for some wise purpose, placed in their hearts this love of literary labor and seclusion. Otherwise, who would feed the undying lamp of thought? But for such men as these, a blast of wind through the chinks and crannies of this old world, or the flapping of a conqueror’s banner, would blow it out forever. The light of the soul is easily extinguished. And whenever I reflect upon these things I become aware of the great importance, in a nation’s history, of the individual fame of scholars and literary men. I fear that it is far greater than the world is willing to acknowledge; or, perhaps, I should say, than the world has thought of acknowledging. Blot out from England’s history the names of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton only, and how much of her glory would you blot out with them! Take from Italy such names as Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Michael Angelo, and Raphael, and how much would still be wanting to the completeness of her glory! How would the history of Spain look if the leaves were torn out, on which are written the names of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon! What would be the fame of Portugal, without her Camoens; of France, without her Racine, and Rabelais, and Voltaire; or Germany, without her Martin Luther, her Goethe, and Schiller! Nay, what were the nations of old, without their philosophers, poets, and historians! Tell me, do not these men in all ages and in all places, emblazon with bright colors the armorial bearings of their country? Yes, and far more than this; for in all ages and all places they give humanity assurance of its greatness; and say, Call not this time or people wholly barbarous; for thus much, even then and there, could the human mind achieve! But the boisterous world has hardly thought of acknowledging all this. Therein it has shown itself somewhat ungrateful. Else, whence the great reproach, the general scorn, the loud derision, with which, to take a familiar example, the monks of the Middle Ages are regarded? That they slept their lives away is most untrue. For in an age when books were few,—so few, so precious, that they were often chained to their oaken shelves with iron chains, like galley slaves to their benches, these men, with their laborious hands, copied upon parchment all the lore and wisdom of the past, and transmitted it to us. Perhaps it is not too much to say that but for these monks, not one line of the classics would have reached our day. Surely, then, we can pardon something to those superstitious ages, perhaps even the mysticism of the scholastic philosophy, since, after all, we can find no harm in it, only the mistaking of the possible for the real, and the high aspirings of the human mind after a long-sought and unknown somewhat. I think the name of Martin Luther, the monk of Wittenberg, alone sufficient to redeem all monkhood from the reproach of laziness! If this will not, perhaps the vast folios of Thomas Aquinas will;—or the countless manuscripts, still treasured in old libraries, whose yellow and wrinkled pages remind one of the hands that wrote them, and the faces that once bent over them. © 2024 WEHD.com

智能索引记录