_What Crotchets in every Direction!_--1. The Germans, or, let me speak more correctly, some of the Germans (and doubtless full of Hoch beer or strong drink), found out some thirty years ago that there were only three men of genius in the records of our planet. And who were they? (1) Homer; (2) Shakespeare; (3) Goethe. So that absolutely Milton was shut out from the constellation. Even he wanted a ticket, though Master Sorrows-of-Werther had one. The porter, it seems, fancied he had no marriage garment, a mistake which a mob might correct, saying, 'No marriage garment! then, damme, he shall have this fellow's' (viz., Goethe's). The trinity, according to these vagabonds, was complete without Milton, as the Roman pomp was full to the eye of the sycophant without the bust of Brutus. 2. Macaulay fancied there were only two men of genius in the reign of Charles II., viz., Milton and the tinker Bunyan. 3. Coleridge (p. 237, 'Table-Talk') fancied there were only two men of genius in his own generation: W. W. and Sir Humphrey Davy. Jeremy Taylor having mentioned two religious men, St. Paul the Hermit and Sulpitius, as having atoned for some supposed foolish garrulities, the one by a three years' silence, the other by a lifelong silence, goes on to express his dissatisfaction with a mode of _rabiosa silentia_ so memorable as this. Yet it is certain in silence there is wisdom, and there may be deep religion. And indeed it is certain, great knowledge, if it be without vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so I have heard that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge checks the dissoluteness of the tongue. 'Ut quisque contemplissimus est, ita solutissimae linguae est,' said Seneca. The silence must be [Greek: kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?--of all things in the world a prating religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and garish, and like the laughters of drunkenness.