human
by noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make _him_ other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray, and Life from the down-hill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter _how_ it went,--he had been content to plow the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any longer, without selling himself to Falsehood, that he might ride in gilt carriages to Whitehall, and have clerks with bundles of papers haunting him,
gpt
Decide this, decide that, which in utmost sorrow of heart no man can perfectly decide! What could gilt carriages do for this man? From of old was there not in his life a weight of meaning, a terror and a splendor as of Heaven itself? His existence there as man set him beyond the need of gilding. Death, Judgment, and Eternity: these already lay as the background of whatsoever he thought or did. All his life lay begirt as in a sea of nameless Thoughts, which no speech of a mortal could name. God's Word, as the Puritan prophets of that time had read it: this was great, and all else was little to him. To call such a man
human
to figure him as the prurient wind-bag described above, seems to me the poorest solecism. Such a man will say:
gpt
Keep your gilt carriages and huzzaing mobs, keep your red-tape clerks, your influentialities, your important businesses. Leave me alone, leave me alone; there is _too much of life_ in me already! Old Samuel Johnson, the greatest soul in England in his day, was not ambitious.
human
Corsica Boswell