‘That only makes it all the more strange,’ I said.
‘But why?’ said the Poet. ‘Have we not, in these days, succumbed too readily to the notion that we are the creatures of our surroundings, and what is called our habitat? And is not that theory a mere ex-post-facto explanation that explains nothing? Who would ever have thought of predicting that any of the three great Puritans you have named would be associated with Florence, and the greatest of the three be born and bred in the very heart of her? Must we not look elsewhere for the explanation?’
‘Know, Nature, like the cuckoo, laughs at law,
Placing her eggs in whatso nest she will;
And when, at callow-time, you think to find
The sparrow’s stationary chirp, lo! bursts
Voyaging voice to glorify the Spring.‘
‘In the same way characters, austere or the reverse, make their appearance in the most unlikely places. We hear too much, I think, of the Spirit of the Age. Shall we not rather believe that the Age is what great Spirits make it?’
‘There,’ said Veronica, ‘do you not press your own theory too far? Without for one moment denying that the sudden appearance of great characters, or the place where they appear, is not to be foretold, one can hardly help feeling that Dante, Savonarola, and Michelangelo, in consequence of something adverse in the Florentine character, did not succeed in making Florence what they would fain have made her.’
‘Truly great characters,’ said Lamia, ‘always fail. Only second-rate people succeed. For my part I am very glad of it, for nothing is so disappointing as failure,—except success.’