And the life passed away in
darkness; and its final work, in all the best beauty of it, has already
perished, only enough remaining to teach us what we have lost.
159. These are the opposite effects of Law and of Liberty on men of the
highest powers. In the case of inferiors the contrast is still more
fatal: under strict law, they become the subordinate workers in great
schools, healthily aiding, echoing, or supplying, with multitudinous
force of hand, the mind of the leading masters: they are the nameless
carvers of great architecture--stainers of glass--hammerers of iron--
helpful scholars, whose work ranks round, if not with, their master's,
and never disgraces it. But the inferiors under a system of license
for the most part perish in miserable effort;* a few struggle into
pernicious eminence--harmful alike to themselves and to all who admire
them; many die of starvation; many insane, either in weakness of insolent
egotism, like Haydon, or in a conscientious agony of beautiful purpose
and warped power, like Blake. There is no probability of the persistence
of a licentious school in any good accidentally discovered by them; there
is an approximate certainty of their gathering, with acclaim, round any
shadow of evil, and following it to whatever quarter of destruction it
may lead.
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