Public life,in any professional form,is quite forbidden;to work with his fellows anywhere appears to be forbidden:nor can the humblest solitary endeavor to work worthily as yet find an arena.How unfold one's little bit of talent;and live,and not lie sleeping,while it is called To-day?As Radical,as Reforming Politician in any public or private form,--not only has this,in Sterling's case,received tragical sentence and execution;but the opposite extreme,the Church whither he had fled,likewise proves abortive:the Church also is not the haven for him at all.What is to be done?Something must be done,and soon,--under penalties.Whoever has received,on him there is an inexorable behest to give."_Fais ton fait_,Do thy little stroke of work:"this is Nature's voice,and the sum of all the commandments,to each man!
A shepherd of the people,some small Agamemnon after his sort,doing what little sovereignty and guidance he can in his day and generation:such every gifted soul longs,and should long,to be.But how,in any measure,is the small kingdom necessary for Sterling to be attained?
Not through newspapers and parliaments,not by rubrics and reading-desks:none of the sceptres offered in the world's market-place,nor none of the crosiers there,it seems,can be the shepherd's-crook for this man.A most cheerful,hoping man;and full of swift faculty,though much lamed,--considerably bewildered too;and tending rather towards the wastes and solitary places for a home;the paved world not being friendly to him hitherto!The paved world,in fact,both on its practical and spiritual side,slams to its doors against him;indicates that he cannot enter,and even must not,--that it will prove a choke-vault,deadly to soul and to body,if he enter.
Sceptre,crosier,sheep-crook is none there for him.
There remains one other implement,the resource of all Adam's posterity that are otherwise foiled,--the Pen.It was evident from this point that Sterling,however otherwise beaten about,and set fluctuating,would gravitate steadily with all his real weight towards Literature.That he would gradually try with consciousness to get into Literature;and,on the whole,never quit Literature,which was now all the world for him.Such is accordingly the sum of his history henceforth:such small sum,so terribly obstructed and diminished by circumstances,is all we have realized from him.
Sterling had by no means as yet consciously quitted the clerical profession,far less the Church as a creed.We have seen,he occasionally officiated still in these months,when a friend requested or an opportunity invited.Nay it turned out afterwards,he had,unknown even to his own family,during a good many weeks in the coldest period of next spring,when it was really dangerous for his health and did prove hurtful to it,--been constantly performing the morning service in some Chapel in Bayswater for a young clerical neighbor,a slight acquaintance of his,who was sickly at the time.
So far as I know,this of the Bayswater Chapel in the spring of 1836,a feat severely rebuked by his Doctor withal,was his last actual service as a churchman.But the conscious life ecclesiastical still hung visibly about his inner unconscious and real life,for years to come;and not till by slow degrees he had unwinded from him the wrappages of it,could he become clear about himself,and so much as try heartily what his now sole course was.Alas,and he had to live all the rest of his days,as in continual flight for his very existence;"ducking under like a poor unfledged partridge-bird,"as one described it,"before the mower;darting continually from nook to nook,and there crouching,to escape the scythe of Death."For Literature Proper there was but little left in such a life.Only the smallest broken fractions of his last and heaviest-laden years can poor Sterling be said to have completely lived.His purpose had risen before him slowly in noble clearness;clear at last,--and even then the inevitable hour was at hand.
In those first London months,as always afterwards while it remained physically possible,I saw much of him;loved him,as was natural,more and more;found in him,many ways,a beautiful acquisition to my existence here.He was full of bright speech and argument;radiant with arrowy vitalities,vivacities and ingenuities.Less than any man he gave you the idea of ill-health.Hopeful,sanguine;nay he did not even seem to need definite hope,or much to form any;projecting himself in aerial pulses like an aurora borealis,like a summer dawn,and filling all the world with present brightness for himself and others.Ill-health?Nay you found at last,it was the very excess of _life_in him that brought on disease.This restless play of being,fit to conquer the world,could it have been held and guided,could not be held.It had worn _holes_in the outer case of it,and there found vent for itself,--there,since not otherwise.