is? What would you think of calling the
general of an army a dissembler because he did not tell every corporal
and private soldier, who pleased to put the question, what his
thoughts were about everything?--Cromwell, I should rather say,
managed all this in a manner we must admire for its perfection. An
endless vortex of such questioning 'corporals' rolled confusedly round
him through his whole course; whom he did answer. It must have been as
a great true-seeing man that he managed this too. Not one proved
falsehood, as I said; not one! Of what man that ever wound himself
through such a coil of things will you say so much?--

* * * * *

But in fact there are two errors, widely prevalent, which pervert to
the very basis our judgments formed about such men as Cromwell; about
their 'ambition,' 'falsity,' and such-like. The first is what I might
call substituting the _goal_ of their career for the course and
starting point of it. The vulgar Historian of a Cromwell fancies that
he had determined on being Protector of England, at the time when he
was ploughing the marsh lands of Cambridgeshire. His career lay all
mapped-out: a program of the whole drama; which he then step by step
dramatically unfolded, with all manner of cunning, deceptive
dramaturgy, as he went on,--the hollow, scheming [Greek: Hypokrites],
or Play-actor that he was! This is a radical perversion; all but
universal in such cases. And think for an instant how different the
fact is! How much does one of us foresee of his own life? Short way
ahead of us it is all dim; an _un_wound skein of possibilities, of
apprehensions, attemptabilities, vague-looming hopes. This Cromwell
had _not_ his life lying all in that fashion of Program, which he
needed then, with that unfathomable cunning of his, only to enact
dramatically, scene after scene! Not so. We see it so; but to him it
was in no measure so. What absurdities would fall-away of themselves,
were this one undeniable fact kept honestly in view by History!
Historians indeed will tell you that they do keep it in view;--but
look whether such is practically the fact! Vulgar History, as in this
Cromwell's case, omits it altogether; even the best kinds of History
only remember it now and then. To remember it duly with rigorous
perfection, as in the fact it _stood_, requires indeed a rare faculty;
rare, nay impossible. A very Shakspeare for faculty; or more than
Shakspeare; who could _ena