ites],
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 Shakespeare for faculty; or more than
Shakespeare; 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. A _great_ man? A poor morbid prurient empty man;
fitter for the ward of a hospital than for a throne among men. I
advise you to keep out of his way. He cannot walk on quiet paths;
unless you will look at him, wonder at him, write paragraphs about
him, he cannot live. It is the _emptiness_ of