The history of the growth of his
mind is not of vital importance to us, and we should be quite willing
to have "returned unexperienced to our graves," like Grumio's
fellow-servants. We think there is getting to be altogether too much
unreserve in the world. We doubt if any man have the right to take
mankind by the button and tell all about himself, unless, like Dante,
he can symbolize his experience. Even Goethe we only half thank,
especially when he kisses and tells, and prefer Shakspeare's
indifference to the intimacy of the German. Silence about one's self is
the most golden of all, as men commonly discover after babbling. Mr.
Milburn, in one of his chapters, gives an account of his passage
through what he is pleased to call _neology_ and _rationalism_. He
represents himself as having sounded the depths of German metaphysics,
criticism, and aesthetics. But a man who is able to write a sentence in
which Lessing's Works are spoken of as if the reading of them tended to
make men "transcendentalists of the supra-nebulous order" no more
deserves a scourging by angels for his devotion to German literature
than Saint Jerome did for being a Ciceronian.
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