Over-haste was Sterling's continual fault;over-haste,and want of the due strength,--alas,mere want of the due _inertia_chiefly;which is so common a gift for most part;and proves so inexorably needful withal!But he was good and generous and true;joyful where there was joy,patient and silent where endurance was required of him;shook innumerable sorrows,and thick-crowding forms of pain,gallantly away from him;fared frankly forward,and with scrupulous care to tread on no one's toes.True,above all,one may call him;a man of perfect veracity in thought,word and deed.Integrity towards all men,--nay integrity had ripened with him into chivalrous generosity;there was no guile or baseness anywhere found in him.Transparent as crystal;he could not hide anything sinister,if such there had been to hide.
A more perfectly transparent soul I have never known.It was beautiful,to read all those interior movements;the little shades of affectations,ostentations;transient spurts of anger,which never grew to the length of settled spleen:all so naive,so childlike,the very faults grew beautiful to you.
And so he played his part among us,and has now ended it:in this first half of the Nineteenth Century,such was the shape of human destinies the world and he made out between them.He sleeps now,in the little burying-ground of Bonchurch;bright,ever-young in the memory of others that must grow old;and was honorably released from his toils before the hottest of the day.
All that remains,in palpable shape,of John Sterling's activities in this world are those Two poor Volumes;scattered fragments gathered from the general waste of forgotten ephemera by the piety of a friend:an inconsiderable memorial;not pretending to have achieved greatness;only disclosing,mournfully,to the more observant,that a promise of greatness was there.Like other such lives,like all lives,this is a tragedy;high hopes,noble efforts;under thickening difficulties and impediments,ever-new nobleness of valiant effort;--and the result death,with conquests by no means corresponding.A life which cannot challenge the world's attention;yet which does modestly solicit it,and perhaps on clear study will be found to reward it.
On good evidence let the world understand that here was a remarkable soul born into it;who,more than others,sensible to its influences,took intensely into him such tint and shape of feature as the world had to offer there and then;fashioning himself eagerly by whatsoever of noble presented itself;participating ardently in the world's battle,and suffering deeply in its bewilderments;--whose Life-pilgrimage accordingly is an emblem,unusually significant,of the world's own during those years of his.A man of infinite susceptivity;who caught everywhere,more than others,the color of the element he lived in,the infection of all that was or appeared honorable,beautiful and manful in the tendencies of his Time;--whose history therefore is,beyond others,emblematic of that of his Time.
In Sterling's Writings and Actions,were they capable of being well read,we consider that there is for all true hearts,and especially for young noble seekers,and strivers towards what is highest,a mirror in which some shadow of themselves and of their immeasurably complex arena will profitably present itself.Here also is one encompassed and struggling even as they now are.This man also had said to himself,not in mere Catechism-words,but with all his instincts,and the question thrilled in every nerve of him,and pulsed in every drop of his blood:"What is the chief end of man?Behold,Itoo would live and work as beseems a denizen of this Universe,a child of the Highest God.By what means is a noble life still possible for me here?Ye Heavens and thou Earth,oh,how?"--The history of this long-continued prayer and endeavor,lasting in various figures for near forty years,may now and for some time coming have something to say to men!
Nay,what of men or of the world?Here,visible to myself,for some while,was a brilliant human presence,distinguishable,honorable and lovable amid the dim common populations;among the million little beautiful,once more a beautiful human soul:whom I,among others,recognized and lovingly walked with,while the years and the hours were.Sitting now by his tomb in thoughtful mood,the new times bring a new duty for me."Why write the Life of Sterling?"I imagine I had a commission higher than the world's,the dictate of Nature herself,to do what is now done._Sic prosit_.
