But one
whose trade it was to be a Duke could hardly have had much sympathy with
his librarian after he had once found out what he really was. For even if
he was not, as Herr Stahr affirms, a republican, and we doubt very much
if he was, yet he was not a man who could play with ideas in the light
French fashion. At the ardent touch of his sincerity, they took fire, and
grew dangerous to what is called the social fabric. The logic of wit,
with its momentary flash, is a very different thing from that consequent
logic of thought, pushing forward its deliberate sap day and night with a
fixed object, which belonged to Lessing. The men who attack abuses are
not so much to be dreaded by the reigning house of Superstition as those
who, as Dante says, syllogize hateful truths. As for "the chains of
feudal service," they might serve a Fenian Head-Centre on a pinch, but
are wholly out of place here. The slavery that Lessing had really taken
on him was that of a great library, an Alcina that could always too
easily witch him away from the more serious duty of his genius. That a
mind like his could be buried in a corner is mere twaddle, and of a kind
that has done great wrong to the dignity of letters. Where-ever Lessing
sat, was the head of the table.
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