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 DATA ANALYSIS
FOR BUSINESS DECISIONS
 LICENSE, DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY, AND LIMITED WARRANTY
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 DATA ANALYSIS
FOR BUSINESS DECISIONS
A Laboratory Manual
Second Edition
Andres Fortino, PhD

MERCURY LEARNING AND INFORMATION

Dulles, Virginia
Boston, Massachusetts
New Delhi
Copyright ©2020 by Mercury Learning and Information LLC. All rights reserved.

This publication, portions of it, or any accompanying software may not be reproduced in any
way, stored in a retrieval system of any type, or transmitted by any means, media, electronic
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postings, or scanning, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Publisher: David Pallai

Mercury Learning and Information
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[email protected]
www.merclearning.com
1-800-232-0223

A. Fortino. Data Analysis for Business Decisions: A Laboratory Manual 2/E.

ISBN: 978-1-68392-592-7

The publisher recognizes and respects all marks used by companies, manufacturers, and
developers as a means to distinguish their products. All brand names and product names
mentioned in this book are trademarks or service marks of their respective companies. Any
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purchaser is to replace the book, based on defective materials or faulty workmanship, but not
based on the operation or functionality of the product.
 Dedicated to Kathleen
for her patience and support
Contents
Preface xiii

Chapter 1 Shaping and Cleaning Data 1

Analysis Case 1.1 – Shaping the Data File 3
Analysis Case 1.2 – Cleaning the Data File 6

Chapter 2 Installing the Analysis ToolPak 9

Analysis Case 2.1 – Excel Analysis ToolPak 10
Installation and Activation 10

Chapter 3 Descriptive Statistics 15

Analysis Case 3.1 – Descriptive Statistics 17
Five-Point Summaries 17
Analysis Case 3.2 – Additional Analysis Case Using
the ORDERS File 21
Analysis Case 3.3 – Descriptive Statistics 22
Tabulation and Pivot Tables 22
Analysis Case 3.4 – Additional Case Using Titanic Data 26
Analysis Case 3.5 – Additional Case Using SFO Airport Survey Data 27

Chapter 4 Histograms 31
Analysis Case 4.1 – Histograms 32
Frequency Distributions 32
Analysis Case 4.2 – Additional Case Using Titanic Data 35

Chapter 5 Pareto Analysis 39

Analysis Case 5.1 – Pareto Analysis 40
Which Are the Most Important? 40
Analysis Case 5.2 – Additional Case Using MOVIES Data 44
Analysis Case 5.3 – Additional Case Using ORDERS 45
Analysis Case 5.4 – Additional Case Using SFO Airport Survey Data 47
viii r Contents

Chapter 6 Scatter Plots 51

Analysis Case 6.1 – Scatter Plots and 2x2 Analysis 52
Which Are the “Best”? 52
Analysis Case 6.2 – Additional Case Using World Bank Data 55
Analysis Case 6.3 – Additional Case Using SFO Airport Survey Data 58

Chapter 7 Correlation and Linear Regression 61

Analysis Case 7.1 – Correlation and Linear Regression 62
How Are the Variables Related? 62
Analysis Case 7.2 – Additional Case Using ORDERS 66
Analysis Case 7.3 – Additional Case Using SFO Airport Survey Data 67

Chapter 8 Multivariate Regression 69

Analysis Case 8.1 – Multivariate Regression 71
Predictive Modeling 71
Analysis Case 8.2 – Additional Case Using SFO Airport Survey Data 75

Chapter 9 Forecasting and Time Series 77

Analysis Case 9.1 – Forecasting and Time Series 78
Predicting Trends and Future Values 78
Analysis Case 9.2 – Additional Case Using ORDERS 81
Analysis Case 9.3 – Additional Case Using MOVIES 87
Analysis Case 9.4 – Additional Forecasting Case Study 88

Chapter 10 Inferential Statistics 91

Analysis Case 10.1 – Assurance of Results 92
Inferential Statistics 92
Analysis Case 10.2 – Additional Case Using FOOTBALLTRIALS 95
Analysis Case 10.3 – Additional Exercise Using SFO
Airport Survey Data 96

Chapter 11 Contingency Analysis 101

Analysis Case 11.1 – Contingency Analysis and Chi-Squared 103
Test of Variable Independence 103
Analysis Case 11.2 – Additional Case Using SFO Airport Survey Data 108
 Contents r ix

Chapter 12 A/B Testing 111

Analysis Case 12.1 – Design and Analysis of Trials 112
A/B Testing 112
Analysis Case 12.2 – Additional Case Using ORDERS 114
Analysis Case 12.3 – Additional Case Using SFO
Airport Survey Data 116
Analysis Case 12.4 – Additional Analysis Cases Using Titanic Data 119

Chapter 13 Text Analytics 121

Analysis Case 13.1 – Unstructured Text Analysis I 122
Analysis Case 13.2 – Unstructured Text Analysis II 125
Using Excel for Sentiment Analysis 125

Chapter 14 Analyzing Big Data Sets 131

Analysis Case 14.1 – Big Data Analysis 132
Using Sampling to Work with Large Data Files 132
Analysis Case 14.2 – Additional Case Using the BankComplaints
Big Data File 139

Chapter 15 Data Visualization 141

The Case 142
The Analysis Template 143
Analysis Case 15.1 – Story 145
Create a Visual Story − Is the point of the visual very clear? 145
Make It a Prop − Has the visual has been simplified and focused? 145
Emulate Legendary Storytellers − Are past masters and
the basic charts that they pioneered emulated? 145
Case Analysis 145
Analysis Case 15.2 – Signs 146
Give Them a Sign − Is the use of signs and symbols appropriate? 146
It’s Like a Communication System − Is the signal-to-noise
ratio high? 146
Design for Function − Is the chart functionally informational
rather than beautiful art? 147
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x r Contents

Case Analysis 147

Analysis Case 15.3 – Purpose 147
Consider the Information Need – Does the chart fulfill
organizational information needs? 147
Consider the Audience – Does the chart allow for
audience biases, needs, and journeys? 148
Answer Well-Framed Analytical Questions –
Does the visual answer a well-framed analytical question? 148
Case Analysis 149
Analysis Case 15.4 – Perception 149
Use the Eye-Brain System of Seeing – Does the eye
of the viewer focus on the most important point being made? 149
Employ the Gestalt Principles of Perception –
Have the principles of the Gestalt psychology of perception
been thoughtfully employed in the visual? 150
Design with Quality – Does the visual inform the viewer
and dispel his ignorance? 150
Case Analysis 150
Analysis Case 15.5 – Method 151
Use Color Effectively – Is color used judiciously and sparsely? 151
Remove All Chart Junk – Is the visual is clear of unnecessary
visual elements not leading to a clear point being made? 151
Tell the Story with the Title – Does the title of the chart
convey the point being made with the chart? 152
Case Analysis 152
Analysis Case 15.6 – Charts 153
Use the Right Chart – Does the type of chart being used
match the level of judgment required? 153
Select the Chart Type Effectively – Does the chart type
used match the business question being answered? 153
Enhance Table Data for Emphasis – Are referenceable
visuals (tables) readable with appropriate conditional
formatting and thumbnail graphs used for emphasis? 154
 Contents r xi

Case Analysis 154

Analysis Case 15.7 – Putting It All Together 155
A Possible Solution 156

Chapter 16 Summary of Analysis Techniques 157

Business Questions and Analysis Techniques for Addressing Them 158
Data Sources 161

Index 163
Preface
This laboratory manual was written for business analysts who
wish to increase their skills in conducting statistical analysis of data
sets to support business decision-making. Most of the exercises use
Excel, today’s most common analysis tool. They range from the most
basic descriptive statistical techniques to more advanced techniques,
such as multivariate linear regression and forecasting.
Advanced exercises cover inferential statistics for continuous
variables (t-Test) and categorical variables (Chi-square), as well as A/B
testing. The manual ends with techniques to deal with the analysis of
text data (text data mining) and tools to manage the analysis of large
data sets (Big Data) using Excel. A set of cases is provided to assist
the analyst to improving their data visualization skills.

On the Companion Files

The exercises require access to the data sets used in analyzing the
cases. They may be accessed on companion disc. with this book or for
downloading by writing to the publisher at [email protected]. A
file folder Lab Data has all the files referenced in the exercises. A zip
file Lab Data.zip, found in the same repository, can be downloaded to
make data available on a local drive. The solution folders within each
exercise folder contain some illustrative charts and tables as well as
solution spreadsheets. All of the figures (including those in full color)
are on the companion files for enlargement and easy-viewing. The
analysis techniques presented in each chapter have short companion
videos you may use to understand the ideas further. The video lessons
may be found on the companion disc. If you wish to stream the video
rather than download it, there is a document on the disc with links
to all the companion videos to be found on a streaming service. The
companion files are also available for download from the publisher by
writing to [email protected].
xiv r Preface

Acknowledgments
Practical books such as this, that are full of cases, are created by many
years of trying them out on students until you get them right. It’s a
matter of keep changing the exercises and trying things out until they
seem to work, and in the end, they help people learn. I wish to thank
the legion of students who were very patient with me and helped
me perfect these cases. Both my graduate students at the NYU
School of Professional Studies and the many American Management
Association professionals who attended my AMA seminars deserve
my gratitude.
I also wish to thank my colleague, Nicole Morgenstern, for taking
a chance with me at AMA. Thank you, Nicole, for sponsoring this
work and running interference for me. My thanks to my graduate
student, Karen pey-rong Hong, who did a superb job updating all
the exercises to the latest version of Excel. The entire team of editors
and artists at Mercury Learning was terrific and has my gratitude.
A special thanks to Jim Walsh, my editor, who kept asking for more
and more and helped shape an excellent book. In the end, it paid off,
Jim. Finally, to my loving and patient wife, Kathleen, who not only
labored over the manuscript by copyediting, but provided much-
needed advice. You were always right, dear.
Dr. Andres Fortino
June 2020
 1
CHAPTER

SHAPING AND CLEANING

DATA
2 r Data Analysis for Business Decisions 2/E

In the first set of exercises, we will look at the importance of shap-

ing and cleaning data files. The initial image in this chapter shows
the Data Cleansing Cycle with many activities, starting with import-
ing the data; merging the data sets; standardizing and normalizing
data; rebuilding missing data; de-duplicating; and last, verifying and
enriching the data set. The object is to produce a data set in Excel in
what is called a flat-file format. When expressed in that format, the
first row of the table must contain all the variable names (with none
missing); every row is of the same nature, and there are no empty
rows or columns. All other rows and columns outside of the table
area should be clear of data. Once in that format, the table is ready
for analysis, and we can safely apply many of the Excel analytic tools.
The source of the data table varies; sometimes we extract it from
a DBMS using the SQL language using queries. Other times we may
obtain a comma-separated values file (with a .CSV extension), or a
formatted text file (with a .TXT extension), or we may have scraped
it from an HMTL formatted Web page. In Analysis Case 1.1, we
explore loading and shaping data files from several sources. We study
how long it takes to load data files of different sizes, including some
huge files that tax the limit of Excel. They not only take a long time to
load, but they are unwieldy to analyze.
Once we practice loading data in various formats, we explore
cleaning it in Analysis Case 1.2. We practice using a small data file that
contains several errors that need to be corrected. You are directed to
the original data to find the original values. The exercise allows you
to utilize many tools in Excel that make the data cleaning process
efficient.
The whole process of scraping, uploading, cleaning, annotating,
and shaping the data file is referred to as data wrangling. Many stud-
ies have shown that this process is not only tedious but can take up
to 80% of the overall time needed to perform the analysis. But it is
critical for success in the analysis. The more skilled you are in the use
of cleaning and shaping tools, and the smarter you are in their use,
the sooner you will start the analysis, and the less time you will need
to find answers.
 Shaping and Cleaning Data r 3

Analysis Case 1.1 – Shaping the Data File

1. Using the Lab Data set provided, open the Analysis Case 1.1 folder
in it, and find the file ORDERS.csv (1.8 MB file with 8,400 re-
cords). (The data set was made available courtesy of Tableau, Inc.)
2. Open ORDERS.csv using Excel.
3. Excel will automatically recognize the .CSV format and open the
file with no further work on your part.
4. ORDERS is a comma-separated values file.
5. Save the file as ORDERS.xlsx in the Analysis Case 1 folder.
6. We will explore the difficulties with scraping, opening, and work-
ing with large data files in Excel. Consider the following four
data files found in the Analysis Case 1.1 folder (Table 1.1). Each
file is progressively larger and more difficult to open in Excel
than the next.
Table 1.1 Characteristics of the data files used to exemplify the lag in
loading data demonstrated in this case.

Size
Name Rows Columns Source Description
(MB)
ORDERS.csv 1.8 8,400 22 Company Office supplies orders
Community.csv 70 376,000 551 US Census 2013 ACS census file
Courses.csv 73 631,139 21 MIT edX 2013 MOOC Courses
BankComplaints.csv 306 753,324 18 US FTC Bank complaints to the
FTC

7. Using the Lab Data set and in the Analysis Case 1.1 folder, find
the file Community.csv (70 MB file with 376,000 records, 551
variables).
8. Note how long it takes to load. Add filters to the top row, and
then filter column D to a “0” value only. Note how long it takes
Excel to execute these commands due to the large number of
rows in the file. (The filter function is found in the Data ribbon.)
Figure 1.1 shows the Community.csv file opened in Excel.
4 r Data Analysis for Business Decisions 2/E

FIGURE 1.1 Exercise to demonstrate that the entire file was loaded and how long
it takes to execute a function when the data file is relatively small.

9. Using the Lab Data set and in the Analysis Case 1.1 folder, find
the file Courses.csv (73 MB file with 631,139 records, 21 vari-
ables). (The data set was made available courtesy of the Har-
vard Dataverse Project.)
10. Note how long it takes to load. Add filters to the top row. Sort
the data by column T. Note how long it takes to perform this
task. Filter column T to a “1” value only.

WARNING: The next file to be studied is so large that, if you

do not have enough memory on your computer, it may lock up
Excel, so be patient when loading and be ready to reboot your
machine if the file does not load or the program locks up.
 Shaping and Cleaning Data r 5

11. Using the Lab Data set and in the Analysis Case 1.1 folder, find
the file BankComplaints.csv (306 MB file with 753,324 records,
18 variables). The file is very large because one column con-
tains the full text of the complaints, which may run to several
paragraphs each. (The data set was made available courtesy of
the U.S. Government Department of Consumer Affairs.)

FIGURE 1.2 Exercise to demonstrate that the entire file was loaded and how long
it takes to execute a function when the data file is relatively large.

12. Note how long it takes to load. Add filters to the top row. Sort
the data by column D. Note how long it takes to perform this
task. Then, filter column H to a “Wells Fargo” value only (Fig-
ure 1.2).
13. Excel, as a tool, does not always handle large data sets well. We
will work with the large data files by sampling them and analyz-
ing the samples in Chapter 14.
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6 r Data Analysis for Business Decisions 2/E

Analysis Case 1.2 – Cleaning the Data File

A drug manufacturer has collected drug test data on 178 patients. We
suspect that the data has transcription problems. (There were errors
when entering data into the computer from the experiment notes.)
1. Using an Internet connection and Web browser, navigate to
http://bit.ly/2zoUVqz.
2. Scrape the data and paste it into a new Excel spreadsheet. Note
that all the data is in one column. The data dictionary is available
at https://bit.ly/2HymiXr.
3. Use the “Text to Columns” function under the Data ribbon to
distribute the data into their respective columns.
Or obtain the data by this other method:
4. Using the Lab Data set and in the Analysis Case 1.1 folder, find
the file calciumgood.txt. The data dictionary for this file is cal-
cium.txt. (The data set was made available by permission of John
P. Holcomb, Jr.)
5. Open calciumgood.txt using Excel.
6. Employ the Excel function to import a data file under the Data
set of functions.
7. The data is in columns, but there are no column titles. Use the
data dictionary to add column titles so all the variables are la-
beled. Note that the file is now in a flat-file format with columns
as variables and rows as records.
8. Save the file as calcium.xlsx.
9. The file contains many errors. Clean it by looking at it and cor-
recting these errors. (For example, some of the numbers in the
SEX column are coded as 22 instead of 2. You can fix that easily.
Fixing data coded as 12 is harder.) If you need to refer to the
original data that was collected, use this link to access the origi-
nal observations: http://academic.csuohio.edu/holcombj/clean/
bigtable.htm.
 Shaping and Cleaning Data r 7

10. When you feel reasonably sure you have a clean data file, an-
swer the following questions by using Excel:
How many men and how many women were in
the study? Sort by gender and compute a sum for
each group.
Were the tests evenly distributed over the labs?
Sort by lab type and compute subtotals by lab type.
Are the calcium levels for the males above or be-
low the average for the females in the test? Sort
by gender and use the AVG function to average
the CAMMOL columns for each sex.
11. Check your results against the following solutions (Figure 1.3).
Keep cleaning the data until you have found all the errors.

FIGURE 1.3 Analysis results computed after cleaning the data file.
 CHAPTER

2
INSTALLING THE ANALYSIS
TOOLPAK
10 r Data Analysis for Business Decisions 2/E

The techniques in this book are practiced using Microsoft Excel. It

turns out that Excel has a wealth of advanced analysis tools, from
regression to inferential tools, tucked in a hidden tool kit called the
Analysis ToolPak. It’s there in Excel already, nothing to install, you
just have to activate it. We make use of many of these advanced tools
in the exercises throughout the book, so it is good to activate it early
on before tackling the advanced exercises.
The first exercise guides the reader through the activation pro-
cess. Note that the activation varies by operating system (PC or Mac)
and Excel version type. At the end of this chapter, there is a simple
exercise to ensure the Analysis ToolPak is active and readily available.

Analysis Case 2.1 – Excel Analysis ToolPak

Installation and Activation

1. Launch Excel.
2. If using Microsoft Windows, click the Office button logo (or
“File” in 2010) in the upper-left corner of the window.
3. On the PC version, click “Options” on the bottom of the pop-up.
Click “Add-ins” in the Excel Options pop-up. Select “Analysis
ToolPak,” and then click “Go.” You should see a dialog screen as
shown in Figure 2.1.
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 It is the aspect which he presents to this generation, that alone
concerns us. Milton the polemic has lost his popularity long ago; and
if we skip the pages of “Paradise Lost” where “God the Father
argues like a school divine,” so did the next age to his own. But, we
are persuaded, he kindles a love and emulation in us which he did
not in foregoing generations. We think we have seen and heard
criticism upon the poems, which the bard himself would have more
valued than the recorded praise of Dryden, Addison and Johnson,
because it came nearer to the mark; was finer and closer
appreciation; the praise of intimate knowledge and delight; and, of
course, more welcome to the poet than the general and vague
acknowledgment of his genius by those able but unsympathizing
critics. We think we have heard the recitation of his verses by genius
which found in them that which itself would say; recitation which told,
in the diamond sharpness of every articulation, that now first was
such perception and enjoyment possible; the perception and
enjoyment of all his varied rhythm, and his perfect fusion of the
classic and the English styles. This is a poet’s right; for every
masterpiece of art goes on for some ages reconciling the world unto
itself, and despotically fashioning the public ear. The opposition to it,
always greatest at first, continually decreases and at last ends; and a
new race grows up in the taste and spirit of the work, with the utmost
advantage for seeing intimately its power and beauty.
But it would be great injustice to Milton to consider him as enjoying
merely a critical reputation. It is the prerogative of this great man to
stand at this hour foremost of all men in literary history, and so (shall
we not say?) of all men, in the power to inspire. Virtue goes out of
him into others. Leaving out of view the pretensions of our
contemporaries (always an incalculable influence), we think no man
can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect of
England and America with an energy comparable to that of Milton.
As a poet, Shakspeare undoubtedly transcends, and far surpasses
him in his popularity with foreign nations; but Shakspeare is a voice
merely; who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not.
Milton stands erect, commanding, still visible as a man among men,
and reads the laws of the moral sentiment to the new-born race.
There is something pleasing in the affection with which we can
regard a man who died a hundred and sixty years ago in the other
hemisphere, who, in respect to personal relations, is to us as the
wind, yet by an influence purely spiritual makes us jealous for his
fame as for that of a near friend. He is identified in the mind with all
select and holy images, with the supreme interests of the human
race. If hereby we attain any more precision, we proceed to say that
we think no man in these later ages, and few men ever, possessed
so great a conception of the manly character. Better than any other
he has discharged the office of every great man, namely, to raise the
idea of Man in the minds of his contemporaries and of posterity,—to
draw after nature a life of man, exhibiting such a composition of
grace, of strength and of virtue, as poet had not described nor hero
lived. Human nature in these ages is indebted to him for its best
portrait. Many philosophers in England, France and Germany, have
formerly dedicated their study to this problem; and we think it
impossible to recall one in those countries who communicates the
same vibration of hope, of self-reverence, of piety, of delight in
beauty, which the name of Milton awakens. Lord Bacon, who has
written much and with prodigious ability on this science, shrinks and
falters before the absolute and uncourtly Puritan. Bacon’s Essays
are the portrait of an ambitious and profound calculator,—a great
man of the vulgar sort. Of the upper world of man’s being they speak
few and faint words. The man of Locke is virtuous without
enthusiasm and intelligent without poetry. Addison, Pope, Hume and
Johnson, students, with very unlike temper and success, of the same
subject, cannot, taken together, make any pretension to the amount
or the quality of Milton’s inspirations. The man of Lord Chesterfield is
unworthy to touch his garment’s hem. Franklin’s man is a frugal,
inoffensive, thrifty citizen, but savors of nothing heroic. The genius of
France has not, even in her best days, yet culminated in any one
head,—not in Rousseau, not in Pascal, not in Fénelon,—into such
perception of all the attributes of humanity as to entitle it to any
rivalry in these lists. In Germany, the greatest writers are still too
recent to institute a comparison; and yet we are tempted to say that
art and not life seems to be the end of their effort. But the idea of a
purer existence than any he saw around him, to be realized in the life
and conversation of men, inspired every act and every writing of
John Milton. He defined the object of education to be, “to fit a man to
perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously all the offices, both
private and public, of peace and war.” He declared that “he who
would aspire to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself
to be a true poem; that is, a composition and pattern of the best and
honorablest things, not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men
or famous cities, unless he have in himself the experience and the
practice of all that which is praiseworthy.” Nor is there in literature a
more noble outline of a wise external education, than that which he
drew up, at the age of thirty-six, in his Letter to Samuel Hartlib. The
muscles, the nerves and the flesh with which this skeleton is to be
filled up and covered, exist in his works and must be sought there.
For the delineation of this heroic image of man, Milton enjoyed
singular advantages. Perfections of body and of mind are attributed
to him by his biographers, that, if the anecdotes had come down
from a greater distance of time, or had not been in part furnished or
corroborated by political enemies, would lead us to suspect the
portraits were ideal, like the Cyrus of Xenophon, the Telemachus of
Fénelon, or the popular traditions of Alfred the Great.
Handsome to a proverb, he was called the lady of his college.
Aubrey says, “This harmonical and ingenuous soul dwelt in a
beautiful and well-proportioned body.” His manners and his carriage
did him no injustice. Wood, his political opponent, relates that “his
deportment was affable, his gait erect and manly, bespeaking
courage and undauntedness.” Aubrey adds a sharp trait, that “he
pronounced the letter R very hard, a certain sign of satirical genius.”
He had the senses of a Greek. His eye was quick, and he was
accounted an excellent master of his rapier. His ear for music was so
acute, that he was not only enthusiastic in his love, but a skilful
performer himself; and his voice, we are told, was delicately sweet
and harmonious. He insists that music shall make a part of a
generous education.
With these keen perceptions, he naturally received a love of
nature and a rare susceptibility to impressions from external beauty.
In the midst of London, he seems, like the creatures of the field and
the forest, to have been tuned in concord with the order of the world;
for, he believed, his poetic vein only flowed from the autumnal to the
vernal equinox; and, in his essay on Education, he doubts whether,
in the fine days of spring, any study can be accomplished by young
men. “In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and
pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go
out and see her riches and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and
earth.” His sensibility to impressions from beauty needs no proof
from his history; it shines through every page. The form and the
voice of Leonora Baroni seemed to have captivated him in Rome,
and to her he addressed his Italian sonnets and Latin epigrams.
To these endowments it must be added that his address and his
conversation were worthy of his fame. His house was resorted to by
men of wit, and foreigners came to England, we are told, “to see the
Lord Protector and Mr. Milton.” In a letter to one of his foreign
correspondents, Emeric Bigot, and in reply apparently to some
compliment on his powers of conversation, he writes: “Many have
been celebrated for their compositions, whose common conversation
and intercourse have betrayed no marks of sublimity or genius. But,
as far as possible, I aim to show myself equal in thought and speech
to what I have written, if I have written anything well.”
These endowments received the benefit of a careful and happy
discipline. His father’s care, seconded by his own endeavor,
introduced him to a profound skill in all the treasures of Latin, Greek,
Hebrew and Italian tongues; and, to enlarge and enliven his elegant
learning, he was sent into Italy, where he beheld the remains of
ancient art, and the rival works of Raphael, Michael Angelo and
Correggio; where, also, he received social and academical honors
from the learned and the great. In Paris, he became acquainted with
Grotius; in Florence or Rome, with Galileo; and probably no traveller
ever entered that country of history with better right to its hospitality,
none upon whom its influences could have fallen more congenially.
Among the advantages of his foreign travel, Milton certainly did not
count it the least that it contributed to forge and polish that great
weapon of which he acquired such extraordinary mastery,—his
power of language. His lore of foreign tongues added daily to his
consummate skill in the use of his own. He was a benefactor of the
English tongue by showing its capabilities. Very early in life he
became conscious that he had more to say to his fellow-men than
they had fit words to embody. At nineteen years, in a college
exercise, he addresses his native language, saying to it that it would
be his choice to leave trifles for a grave argument,
“Such as may make thee search thy coffers round,
Before thou clothe my fancy in fit sound;
Such where the deep transported mind may soar
Above the wheeling poles, and at Heaven’s door
Look in, and see each blissful deity,
How he before the thunderous throne doth lie.”
Michael Angelo calls “him alone an artist, whose hands can
execute what his mind has conceived.” The world, no doubt,
contains many of that class of men whom Wordsworth denominates
“silent poets,” whose minds teem with images which they want words
to clothe. But Milton’s mind seems to have no thought or emotion
which refused to be recorded. His mastery of his native tongue was
more than to use it as well as any other; he cast it into new forms.
He uttered in it things unheard before. Not imitating but rivalling
Shakspeare, he scattered, in tones of prolonged and delicate
melody, his pastoral and romantic fancies; then, soaring into
unattempted strains, he made it capable of an unknown majesty, and
bent it to express every trait of beauty, every shade of thought; and
searched the kennel and jakes as well as the palaces of sound for
the harsh discords of his polemic wrath. We may even apply to his
performance on the instrument of language, his own description of
music:
“—Notes, with many a winding bout
Of linkëd sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.”
But, whilst Milton was conscious of possessing this intellectual
voice, penetrating through ages and propelling its melodious
undulations forward through the coming world, he knew that this
mastery of language was a secondary power, and he respected the
mysterious source whence it had its spring; namely, clear
conceptions and a devoted heart. “For me,” he said, in his “Apology
for Smectymnuus,” “although I cannot say that I am utterly untrained
in those rules which best rhetoricians have given, or unacquainted
with those examples which the prime authors of eloquence have
written in any learned tongue, yet true eloquence I find to be none
but the serious and hearty love of truth; and that whose mind soever
is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with
the dearest charity to infuse the knowledge of them into others, when
such a man would speak, his words, by what I can express, like so
many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command, and in
well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places.”
But, as basis or fountain of his rare physical and intellectual
accomplishments, the man Milton was just and devout. He is rightly
dear to mankind, because in him, among so many perverse and
partial men of genius,—in him humanity rights itself; the old eternal
goodness finds a home in his breast, and for once shows itself
beautiful. His gifts are subordinated to his moral sentiments. And his
virtues are so graceful that they seem rather talents than labors.
Among so many contrivances as the world has seen to make
holiness ugly, in Milton at least it was so pure a flame, that the
foremost impression his character makes is that of elegance. The
victories of the conscience in him are gained by the commanding
charm which all the severe and restrictive virtues have for him. His
virtues remind us of what Plutarch said of Timoleon’s victories, that
they resembled Homer’s verses, they ran so easy and natural. His
habits of living were austere. He was abstemious in diet, chaste, an
early riser, and industrious. He tells us, in a Latin poem, that the lyrist
may indulge in wine and in a freer life; but that he who would write
an epic to the nations, must eat beans and drink water. Yet in his
severity is no grimace or effort. He serves from love, not from fear.
He is innocent and exact, because his taste was so pure and
delicate. He acknowledges to his friend Diodati, at the age of twenty-
one, that he is enamored, if ever any was, of moral perfection: “For,
whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon me in other respects,
he has certainly inspired me, if any ever were inspired, with a
passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, according to the fable,
ever seek her daughter Proserpine with such unceasing solicitude,
as I have sought this τοῦ καλοῦ ἰδέαν, this perfect model of the
beautiful in all forms and appearances of things.”
When he was charged with loose habits of living, he declares, that
“a certain niceness of nature, an honest haughtiness and self-
esteem either of what I was or what I might be, and a modesty, kept
me still above those low descents of mind beneath which he must
deject and plunge himself, that can agree” to such degradation. “His
mind gave him,” he said, “that every free and gentle spirit, without
that oath of chastity, ought to be born a knight; nor needed to expect
the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon his shoulder, to stir him
up, by his counsel and his arm, to secure and protect” attempted
innocence.
He states these things, he says, “to show, that, though Christianity
had been but slightly taught him, yet a certain reservedness of
natural disposition and moral discipline, learned out of the noblest
philosophy, was enough to keep him in disdain of far less
incontinences than these,” that had been charged on him. In like
spirit, he replies to the suspicious calumny respecting his morning
haunts. “Those morning haunts are where they should be, at home;
not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits of an irregular feast, but up
and stirring, in winter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to
labor or devotion; in summer, as oft with the bird that first rouses, or
not much tardier, to read good authors, or cause them to be read, till
the attention be weary, or memory have its perfect fraught; then with
useful and generous labors preserving the body’s health and
hardiness, to render lightsome, clear, and not lumpish obedience to
the mind, to the cause of religion and our country’s liberty, when it
shall require firm hearts in sound bodies to stand and cover their
stations. These are the morning practices.” This native honor never
forsook him. It is the spirit of “Comus,” the loftiest song in the praise
of chastity that is in any language. It always sparkles in his eyes. It
breathed itself over his decent form. It refined his amusements,
which consisted in gardening, in exercise with the sword, and in
playing on the organ. It engaged his interest in chivalry, in courtesy,
in whatsoever savored of generosity and nobleness. This
magnanimity shines in all his life. He accepts a high impulse at every
risk, and deliberately undertakes the defence of the English people,
when advised by his physicians that he does it at the cost of sight.
There is a forbearance even in his polemics. He opens the war and
strikes the first blow. When he had cut down his opponents, he left
the details of death and plunder to meaner partisans. He said, “he
had learned the prudence of the Roman soldier, not to stand
breaking of legs, when the breath was quite out of the body.”
To this antique heroism, Milton added the genius of the Christian
sanctity. Few men could be cited who have so well understood what
is peculiar in the Christian ethics, and the precise aid it has brought
to men, in being an emphatic affirmation of the omnipotence of
spiritual laws, and, by way of marking the contrast to vulgar opinions,
laying its chief stress on humility. The indifferency of a wise mind to
what is called high and low, and the fact that true greatness is a
perfect humility, are revelations of Christianity which Milton well
understood. They give an inexhaustible truth to all his compositions.
His firm grasp of this truth is his weapon against the prelates. He
celebrates in the martyrs “the unresistible might of weakness.” He
told the bishops that “instead of showing the reason of their lowly
condition from divine example and command, they seek to prove
their high preëminence from human consent and authority.” He
advises that in country places, rather than to trudge many miles to a
church, public worship be maintained nearer home, as in a house or
barn. “For, notwithstanding the gaudy superstition of some still
devoted ignorantly to temples, we may be well assured, that he who
disdained not to be born in a manger, disdains not to be preached in
a barn.” And the following passage, in the “Reason of Church
Government,” indicates his own perception of the doctrine of
humility. “Albeit I must confess to be half in doubt whether I should
bring it forth or no, it being so contrary to the eye of the world, that I
shall endanger either not to be regarded, or not to be understood.
For who is there, almost, that measures wisdom by simplicity,
strength by suffering, dignity by lowliness?” Obeying this sentiment,
Milton deserved the apostrophe of Wordsworth:—
 “Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on itself did lay.”
He laid on himself the lowliest duties. Johnson petulantly taunts
Milton with “great promise and small performance,” in returning from
Italy because his country was in danger, and then opening a private
school. Milton, wiser, felt no absurdity in this conduct. He returned
into his revolutionized country, and assumed an honest and useful
task, by which he might serve the state daily, whilst he launched
from time to time his formidable bolts against the enemies of liberty.
He felt the heats of that “love” which “esteems no office mean.” He
compiled a logic for boys; he wrote a grammar; and devoted much of
his time to the preparing of a Latin dictionary. But the religious
sentiment warmed his writings and conduct with the highest affection
of faith. The memorable covenant, which in his youth, in the second
book of the “Reason of Church Government,” he makes with God
and his reader, expressed the faith of his old age. For the first time
since many ages, the invocations of the Eternal Spirit in the
commencement of his books are not poetic forms, but are thoughts,
and so are still read with delight. His views of choice of profession,
and choice in marriage, equally expect a divine leading.
Thus chosen, by the felicity of his nature and of his breeding, for
the clear perception of all that is graceful and all that is great in man,
Milton was not less happy in his times. His birth fell upon the agitated
years when the discontents of the English Puritans were fast drawing
to a head against the tyranny of the Stuarts. No period has
surpassed that in the general activity of mind. It is said that no
opinion, no civil, religious, moral dogma can be produced, that was
not broached in the fertile brain of that age. Questions that involve all
social and personal rights were hasting to be decided by the sword,
and were searched by eyes to which the love of freedom, civil and
religious, lent new illumination. Milton, gentle, learned, delicately
bred in all the elegancy of art and learning, was set down in England
in the stern, almost fanatic society of the Puritans. The part he took,
the zeal of his fellowship, make us acquainted with the greatness of
his spirit as in tranquil times we could not have known it. Susceptible
as Burke to the attractions of historical prescription, of royalty, of
chivalry, of an ancient church illustrated by old martyrdoms and
installed in cathedrals,—he threw himself, the flower of elegancy, on
the side of the reeking conventicle; the side of humanity, but
unlearned and unadorned. His muse was brave and humane, as well
as sweet. He felt the dear love of native land and native language.
The humanity which warms his pages begins as it should, at home.
He preferred his own English, so manlike he was, to the Latin, which
contained all the treasures of his memory. “My mother bore me,” he
said, “a speaker of what God made mine own, and not a translator.”
He told the Parliament, that “the imprimaturs of Lambeth House had
been writ in Latin; for that our English, the language of men ever
famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily
find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory presumption.” At
one time he meditated writing a poem on the settlement of Britain,
and a history of England was one of the three main tasks which he
proposed to himself. He proceeded in it no further than to the
Conquest. He studied with care the character of his countrymen, and
once in the “History,” and once again in the “Reason of Church
Government,” he has recorded his judgment of the English genius.
Thus drawn into the great controversies of the times, in them he is
never lost in a party. His private opinions and private conscience
always distinguish him. That which drew him to the party was his
love of liberty, ideal liberty; this therefore he could not sacrifice to any
party. Toland tells us, “As he looked upon true and absolute freedom
to be the greatest happiness of this life, whether to societies or
single persons, so he thought constraint of any sort to be the utmost
misery; for which reason be used to tell those about him the entire
satisfaction of his mind, that he had constantly employed his strength
and faculties in the defence of liberty, and in direct opposition to
slavery.” Truly he was an apostle of freedom; of freedom in the
house, in the state, in the church; freedom of speech, freedom of the
press, yet in his own mind discriminated from savage license,
because that which he desired was the liberty of the wise man,
containing itself in the limits of virtue. He pushed, as far as any in
that democratic age, his ideas of civil liberty. He proposed to
establish a republic, of which the federal power was weak and
loosely defined, and the substantial power should remain with
primary assemblies. He maintained, that a nation may try, judge, and
slay their king, if he be a tyrant. He pushed as far his views of
ecclesiastical liberty. He taught the doctrine of unlimited toleration.
One of his tracts is writ to prove that no power on earth can compel
in matters of religion. He maintained the doctrine of literary liberty,
denouncing the censorship of the press, and insisting that a book
shall come into the world as freely as a man, so only it bear the
name of author or printer, and be responsible for itself like a man. He
maintained the doctrine of domestic liberty, or the liberty of divorce,
on the ground that unfit disposition of mind was a better reason for
the act of divorce than infirmity of body, which was good ground in
law. The tracts he wrote on these topics are, for the most part, as
fresh and pertinent to-day as they were then. The events which
produced them, the practical issues to which they tend, are mere
occasions for this philanthropist to blow his trumpet for human rights.
They are all varied applications of one principle, the liberty of the
wise man. He sought absolute truth, not accommodating truth. His
opinions on all subjects are formed for man as he ought to be, for a
nation of Miltons. He would be divorced when he finds in his consort
unfit disposition; knowing that he should not abuse that liberty,
because with his whole heart he abhors licentiousness and loves
chastity. He defends the slaying of the king, because a king is a king
no longer than he governs by the laws; “it would be right to kill Philip
of Spain making an inroad into England, and what right the king of
Spain hath to govern us at all, the same hath the king Charles to
govern tyrannically.” He would remove hirelings out of the church,
and support preachers by voluntary contributions; requiring that such
only should preach as have faith enough to accept so self-denying
and precarious a mode of life, scorning to take thought for the
aspects of prudence and expediency. The most devout man of his
time, he frequented no church; probably from a disgust at the fierce
spirit of the pulpits. And so, throughout all his actions and opinions,
is he a consistent spiritualist, or believer in the omnipotence of
spiritual laws. He wished that his writings should be communicated
only to those who desired to see them. He thought nothing honest
was low. He thought he could be famous only in proportion as he
enjoyed the approbation of the good. He admonished his friend “not
to admire military prowess, or things in which force is of most avail.
For it would not be matter of rational wonder, if the wethers of our
country should be born with horns that could batter down cities and
towns. Learn to estimate great characters, not by the amount of
animal strength, but by the habitual justice and temperance of their
conduct.”
Was there not a fitness in the undertaking of such a person to
write a poem on the subject of Adam, the first man? By his sympathy
with all nature; by the proportion of his powers; by great knowledge,
and by religion, he would reascend to the height from which our
nature is supposed to have descended. From a just knowledge of
what man should be, he described what he was. He beholds him as
he walked in Eden:—
“His fair large front and eye sublime declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks
Round from his parted forelock manly hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad.”
And the soul of this divine creature is excellent as his form. The tone
of his thought and passion is as healthful, as even, and as vigorous,
as befits the new and perfect model of a race of gods.
The perception we have attributed to Milton, of a purer ideal of
humanity, modifies his poetic genius. The man is paramount to the
poet. His fancy is never transcendent, extravagant; but, as Bacon’s
imagination was said to be “the noblest that ever contented itself to
minister to the understanding,” so Milton’s ministers to the character.
Milton’s sublimest song, bursting into heaven with its peals of
melodious thunder, is the voice of Milton still. Indeed, throughout his
poems, one may see under a thin veil, the opinions, the feelings,
even the incidents of the poet’s life, still reappearing. The sonnets
are all occasional poems. “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso” are but a
finer autobiography of his youthful fancies at Harefield; the “Comus”
a transcript, in charming numbers, of that philosophy of chastity,
which, in the “Apology for Smectymnuus,” and in the “Reason of
Church Government,” he declares to be his defence and religion.
The “Samson Agonistes” is too broad an expression of his private
griefs to be mistaken, and is a version of the “Doctrine and Discipline
of Divorce.” The most affecting passages in “Paradise Lost” are
personal allusions; and, when we are fairly in Eden, Adam and
Milton are often difficult to be separated. Again, in “Paradise
Regained,” we have the most distinct marks of the progress of the
poet’s mind, in the revision and enlargement of his religious
opinions. This may be thought to abridge his praise as a poet. It is
true of Homer and Shakspeare that they do not appear in their
poems; that those prodigious geniuses did cast themselves so totally
into their song, that their individuality vanishes, and the poet towers
to the sky, whilst the man quite disappears. The fact is memorable.
Shall we say that in our admiration and joy in these wonderful poems
we have even a feeling of regret that the men knew not what they
did; that they were too passive in their great service; were channels
through which streams of thought flowed from a higher source, which
they did not appropriate, did not blend with their own being? Like
prophets, they seem but imperfectly aware of the import of their own
utterances. We hesitate to say such things, and say them only to the
unpleasing dualism, when the man and the poet show like a double
consciousness. Perhaps we speak to no fact, but to mere fables, of
an idle mendicant Homer, and of a Shakspeare content with a mean
and jocular way of life. Be it how it may, the genius and office of
Milton were different, namely, to ascend by the aids of his learning
and his religion,—by an equal perception, that is, of the past and the
future,—to a higher insight and more lively delineation of the heroic
life of man. This was his poem; whereof all his indignant pamphlets
and all his soaring verses are only single cantos or detached
stanzas. It was plainly needful that his poetry should be a version of
his own life, in order to give weight and solemnity to his thoughts; by
which they might penetrate and possess the imagination and the will
of mankind. The creations of Shakspeare are cast into the world of
thought to no further end than to delight. Their intrinsic beauty is their
excuse for being. Milton, fired “with dearest charity to infuse the
knowledge of good things into others,” tasked his giant imagination
and exhausted the stores of his intellect for an end beyond, namely,
to teach. His own conviction it is which gives such authority to his
strain. Its reality is its force. If out of the heart it came, to the heart it
must go. What schools and epochs of common rhymers would it
need to make a counterbalance to the severe oracles of his muse:
“In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so.”
The lover of Milton reads one sense in his prose and in his
metrical compositions; and sometimes the muse soars highest in the
former, because the thought is more sincere. Of his prose in general,
not the style alone but the argument also is poetic; according to Lord
Bacon’s definition of poetry, following that of Aristotle, “Poetry, not
finding the actual world exactly conformed to its idea of good and
fair, seeks to accommodate the shows of things to the desires of the
mind, and to create an ideal world better than the world of
experience.” Such certainly is the explanation of Milton’s tracts. Such
is the apology to be entered for the plea for freedom of divorce; an
essay, which, from the first until now, has brought a degree of
obloquy on his name. It was a sally of the extravagant spirit of the
time, overjoyed, as in the French Revolution, with the sudden
victories it had gained, and eager to carry on the standard of truth to
new heights. It is to be regarded as a poem on one of the griefs of
man’s condition, namely, unfit marriage. And as many poems have
been written upon unfit society, commending solitude, yet have not
been proceeded against, though their end was hostile to the state;
so should this receive that charity which an angelic soul, suffering
more keenly than others from the unavoidable evils of human life, is
entitled to.
We have offered no apology for expanding to such length our
commentary on the character of John Milton; who, in old age, in
solitude, in neglect, and blind, wrote the Paradise Lost; a man whom
labor or danger never deterred from whatever efforts a love of the
supreme interests of man prompted. For are we not the better; are
not all men fortified by the remembrance of the bravery, the purity,
the temperance, the toil, the independence and the angelic devotion
of this man, who, in a revolutionary age, taking counsel only of
himself, endeavored, in his writings and in his life, to carry out the life
of man to new heights of spiritual grace and dignity, without any
abatement of its strength?

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Reprinted from the North American Review, July, 1838.

PAPERS FROM THE DIAL.

The tongue is prone to lose the way;

Not so the pen, for in a letter
We have not better things to say,
But surely say them better.
 PAPERS FROM THE DIAL.

I.

THOUGHTS ON MODERN LITERATURE. [5]

In our fidelity to the higher truth we need not disown our debt, in
our actual state of culture, in the twilights of experience, to these
rude helpers. They keep alive the memory and the hope of a better
day. When we flout all particular books as initial merely, we truly
express the privilege of spiritual nature, but alas, not the fact and
fortune of this low Massachusetts and Boston, of these humble
Junes and Decembers of mortal life. Our souls are not self-fed, but
do eat and drink of chemical water and wheat. Let us not forget the
genial miraculous force we have known to proceed from a book. We
go musing into the vault of day and night; no constellation shines, no
muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored
leaves, and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons creak along the
road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and
read a few sentences or pages, and lo! the air swims with life,
secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand, life is
made up of them. Such is our debt to a book. Observe moreover that
we ought to credit literature with much more than the bare word it
gives us. I have just been reading poems which now in memory
shine with a certain steady, warm, autumnal light. That is not in their
grammatical construction which they give me. If I analyze the
sentences it eludes me, but is the genius and suggestion of the
whole. Over every true poem lingers a certain wild beauty,
immeasurable; a happiness lightsome and delicious fills the heart
and brain, as they say every man walks environed by his proper
atmosphere, extending to some distance around him. This beautiful
result must be credited to literature also in casting its account.
In looking at the library of the Present Age, we are first struck with
the fact of the immense miscellany. It can hardly be characterized by
any species of book, for every opinion, old and new, every hope and
fear, every whim and folly has an organ. It exhibits a vast carcass of
tradition every year with as much solemnity as a new revelation.
Along with these it vents books that breathe of new morning, that
seem to heave with the life of millions, books for which men and
women peak and pine; books which take the rose out of the cheek of
him that wrote them, and give him to the midnight a sad, solitary,
diseased man; which leave no man where they found him, but make
him better or worse; and which work dubiously on society and seem
to inoculate it with a venom before any healthy result appears.
In order to any complete view of the literature of the present age,
an inquiry should include what it quotes, what it writes and what it
wishes to write. In our present attempt to enumerate some traits of
the recent literature, we shall have somewhat to offer on each of
these topics, but we cannot promise to set in very exact order what
we have to say.
In the first place it has all books. It reprints the wisdom of the
world. How can the age be a bad one which gives me Plato and Paul
and Plutarch, St. Augustine, Spinoza, Chapman, Beaumont and
Fletcher, Donne and Sir Thomas Browne, beside its own riches? Our
presses groan every year with new editions of all the select pieces of
the first of mankind,—meditations, history, classifications, opinions,
epics, lyrics, which the age adopts by quoting them. If we should
designate favorite studies in which the age delights more than in the
rest of this great mass of the permanent literature of the human race,
one or two instances would be conspicuous. First; the prodigious
growth and influence of the genius of Shakspeare, in the last one
hundred and fifty years, is itself a fact of the first importance. It
almost alone has called out the genius of the German nation into an
activity which spreading from the poetic into the scientific, religious
and philosophical domains, has made theirs now at last the
paramount intellectual influence of the world, reacting with great
energy on England and America. And thus, and not by mechanical
diffusion, does an original genius work and spread himself.
The poetry and speculation of the age are marked by a certain
philosophic turn, which discriminates them from the works of earlier
times. The poet is not content to see how “Fair hangs the apple from
the rock,” “What music a sunbeam awoke in the groves,” nor of
Hardiknute, how “Stately steppes he east the way, and stately
steppes he west,” but he now revolves, What is the apple to me?
and what the birds to me? and what is Hardiknute to me? and what
am I? And this is called subjectiveness, as the eye is withdrawn from
the object and fixed on the subject or mind.
We can easily concede that a steadfast tendency of this sort
appears in modern literature. It is the new consciousness of the one
mind, which predominates in criticism. It is the uprise of the soul, and
not the decline. It is founded on that insatiable demand for unity, the
need to recognize one nature in all the variety of objects, which
always characterizes a genius of the first order. Accustomed always
to behold the presence of the universe in every part, the soul will not
condescend to look at any new part as a stranger, but saith,—“I
know all already, and what art thou? Show me thy relations to me, to
all, and I will entertain thee also.”
There is a pernicious ambiguity in the use of the term subjective.
We say, in accordance with the general view I have stated, that the
single soul feels its right to be no longer confounded with numbers,
but itself to sit in judgment on history and literature, and to summon
all facts and parties before its tribunal. And in this sense the age is
subjective.
But, in all ages, and now more, the narrow-minded have no
interest in anything but in its relation to their personality. What will
help them to be delivered from some burden, eased in some
circumstance, flattered or pardoned or enriched; what will help to
marry or to divorce them, to prolong or to sweeten life, is sure of their
interest; and nothing else. Every form under the whole heaven they
behold in this most partial light or darkness of intense selfishness,
until we hate their being. And this habit of intellectual selfishness has
acquired in our day the fine name of subjectiveness.
Nor is the distinction between these two habits to be found in the
circumstance of using the first person singular, or reciting facts and
feelings of personal history. A man may say I, and never refer to
himself as an individual; and a man may recite passages of his life
with no feeling of egotism. Nor need a man have a vicious
subjectiveness because he deals in abstract propositions.
But the criterion which discriminates these two habits in the poet’s
mind is the tendency of his composition; namely, whether it leads us
to nature, or to the person of the writer. The great always introduce
us to facts; small men introduce us always to themselves. The great
man, even whilst he relates a private fact personal to him, is really
leading us away from him to an universal experience. His own
affection is in nature, in what is, and, of course, all his
communication leads outward to it, starting from whatsoever point.
The great never with their own consent become a load on the minds
they instruct. The more they draw us to them, the farther from them
or more independent of them we are, because they have brought us
to the knowledge of somewhat deeper than both them and us. The
great never hinder us; for their activity is coincident with the sun and
moon, with the course of the rivers and of the winds, with the stream
of laborers in the street and with all the activity and well-being of the
race. The great lead us to nature, and in our age to metaphysical
nature, to the invisible awful facts, to moral abstractions, which are
not less nature than is a river or a coal-mine,—nay, they are far more
nature,—but its essence and soul.
But the weak and wicked, led also to analyze, saw nothing in
thought but luxury. Thought for the selfish became selfish. They
invited us to contemplate nature, and showed us an abominable self.
Would you know the genius of the writer? Do not enumerate his
talents or his feats, but ask thyself, What spirit is he of? Do gladness