A very Shakspeare for
faculty; or more than Shakspeare; who could _enact_ a brother man's
biography, see with the brother man's eyes at all points of his course what
things _he_ saw; in short, _know_ his course and him, as few "Historians"
are like to do. Half or more of all the thick-plied perversions which
distort our image of Cromwell, will disappear, if we honestly so much as
try to represent them so; in sequence, as they _were_; not in the lump, as
they are thrown down before us.
But a second error, which I think the generality commit, refers to this
same "ambition" itself. We exaggerate the ambition of Great Men; we
mistake what the nature of it is. Great Men are not ambitious in that
sense; he is a small poor man that is ambitious so. Examine the man who
lives in misery because he does not shine above other men; who goes about
producing himself, pruriently anxious about his gifts and claims;
struggling to force everybody, as it were begging everybody for God's sake,
to acknowledge him a great man, and set him over the heads of men! Such a
creature is among the wretchedest sights seen under this sun.
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