stonished later observers in Napoleon before it wore him out. How if
Caesar were nothing but a Nelson and a Gladstone combined! A prodigy of
vitality without any special quality of mind! Nay, with ideas that were
worn out before he was born, as Nelson's and Gladstone's were! I have
considered that possibility too, and rejected it. I cannot cite all
the stories about Caesar which seem to me to show that he was genuinely
original; but let me at least point out that I have been careful to
attribute nothing but originality to him. Originality gives a man an air
of frankness, generosity, and magnanimity by enabling him to estimate
the value of truth, money, or success in any particular instance quite
independently of convention and moral generalization. He therefore will
not, in the ordinary Treasury bench fashion, tell a lie which everybody
knows to be a lie (and consequently expects him as a matter of good
taste to tell). His lies are not found out: they pass for candors. He
understands the paradox of money, and gives it away when he can get most
for it: in other words, when its value is least, which is just when a
common man tries hardest to get it. He knows that the real moment of
success is not the moment apparent to the crowd. Hence, in order to
produce an impression of complete disinterestedness and magnanimity, he
has only to act with entire selfishness; and this is perhaps the only
sense in which a man can be said to be naturally great. It is in this
sense that I have represented Caesar as great. Having virtue, he has no
need of goodness. He is neither forgiving, frank, nor generous, because
a man who is too great to resent has nothing to forgive; a man who says
things that other people are afraid to say need be no more frank than
Bismarck was; and there is no generosity in giving things you do not
want to people of whom you intend to make use. This distinction between
virtue and goodness is not understood in England: hence the poverty of
our drama in heroes. Our stage attempts at them are mere goody-goodies.
Goodness, in its popular British sense of self-denial, implies that man
is vicious by nature, and that supreme goodness is supreme martyrdom.
Not sharing that pious opinion, I have not given countenance to it in
any of my plays. In this I follow the precedent of the ancient myths,
which represent the hero as vanquishing his enemies, not in fair fight,
but with enchanted sword, superequine horse and magical invulne