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Updated: June 21, 2025
But the curse of a life of pleasure is its aversion to useful activity. Talk of the genius that lies crushed and obscure in poverty! Wealth and station have also their mute Miltons and inglorious Hampdens. Alas! how much of deep and true wisdom do we meet among the triflers of the world!
We now possessed, if not Homers, yet Virgils and Miltons; if not a Pindar, yet a Horace; of Theocrituses there was no lack: and thus they weighed themselves by comparisons from without; whilst the mass of poetical works always increased, so that at last there could be a comparison from within.
"I therefore solaced myself by reading the immortal poem at night, in my bare chamber, looking occasionally down into the graveyard, and thinking of mute, inglorious Miltons. "The curious reader may ask how I escaped the catastrophe of publishing the poem at last. That is a piece of good fortune for which I am indebted to the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford.
Just as the brain is the servant of the body, rather than its master, so the devoted head meekly offers itself as a sort of vicarious atonement for the sins of the entire body. It is the eloquent spokesman of such "mute, inglorious Miltons" as the stomach, the liver, the muscles, and the heart.
Then an evil spirit of contradiction entered into Elizabeth, and she became suddenly extremely talkative. To listen to her, Rotherwood might have been a rustic paradise, full of "village Hampdens and mute, inglorious Miltons," and that in its idyllic streets peace and simplicity reigned.
How many Miltons, how many Lincolns, were crucified in that army of the young? 'We must repay. Our destiny is clear, and no people can thwart its destiny without the gravest danger. Our duty is to restore. Whatever our resources, in things material or of the spirit, this generation and yours and the generation to follow must give unsparingly.
But the curse of a life of pleasure is its aversion to useful activity. Talk of the genius that lies crushed and obscure in poverty! Wealth and station have also their mute Miltons and inglorious Hampdens. Alas! how much of deep and true wisdom do we meet among the triflers of the world!
".... Not with the Miltons and Grays, not with the Platos and Spinozas, not with the Swifts and Voltaires, not with the Montaignes and Addisons, can we rank Emerson. No man could see this clearer than Emerson himself. 'Alas, my friend, he writes in reply to Carlyle, who had exhorted him to creative work, 'Alas, my friend, I can do no such gay thing as you say.
I do not pretend that they are Scotts or Miltons; but I wish to prove that they are men, capable of producing their proportion of Scotts and Miltons, if they could be allowed to live in a state of physical and intellectual freedom. But where, at the present time, can they live in perfect freedom, cheered by the hopes and excited by the rewards, which stimulate white men to exertion?
Nor let us forget Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things evil; Hobson's choice, Frankenstein's monster, Macaulay's schoolboy, Lord Burleigh's nod, Sir Boyle Roche's bird, Mahomed's coffin, and Davy Jones's locker.
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