CHAPTER XXI
The Man and His Work
Bolívar was of rather less than medium height, thin and agile. In all his actions he showed quickness and alertness. He had large, black, piercing eyes, his eyebrows were curved and thick; his nose straight and long; his cheeks somewhat sunken; his mouth, not particularly well formed but expressive and graceful. From early youth his forehead was deeply lined. His neck was erect; his chest, narrow. At one period of his life he wore a mustache and sidewhiskers, but he resumed shaving about 1825, when grey hair began to appear. His hair was auburn at first, and his complexion very white in his youth, but tanned after his long campaigns. His appearance evidenced frankness of character, and his body, spiritual energy.
Bolívar was always a great reader. In his style and his quotations he shows his predilection for the classics, especially for Plutarch's "Lives." He also read much of the literature of the French Revolution. He was a very impressive orator; his addresses and proclamations show much emphasis, and the rhetorical artifice is apparent, as it is in all literature of this kind. In his letters he uses a very simple and naturally witty style. He was a great coiner of sentences, many of which can be found in his proclamations and addresses. His political perspicacity was remarkable. He could and did break the conventionalities and the political principles sacred in that epoch, to formulate those which were better for the condition of the country. He was a shrewd judge of men, and knew how to honor them and please them for the good of the cause they defended. All his intellectual power was necessary to become a master of men like Páez and Bermúdez. His mental alertness was exceptional. He could make a decision promptly without showing the effect of haste. He had a brain for large problems and for small details. He would attend to the organization of his army down to the most minute details, as well as to the preparations for long campaigns.
The most admirable moral quality of Bolívar was his constancy. It rose above everything.
His energy was marvelous to carry him through the difficulties he had to encounter. In defeat he had
"the virtue of Antheus as no other hero had to such a degree; a singular virtue of growing to more gigantic proportions when the fall had been deepest and hardest; he had something like a strengthening power to assimilate the sap of adversity and of discredit, not through the lessons of experience, but through the unconscious and immediate reaction of a nature which thus fulfils its own laws. His personality as a warrior has in this characteristic the seal which individualizes it, as was aptly said in a few words by his adversary, the Spanish general Morillo: 'More fearful vanquished than victor.'"[1]
[Footnote 1: Bolívar—J.E. Rodó]
His soul could be like steel, as in the case of Piar, and it could be soft, as in his untiring forgiveness to Santander. His generosity was unlimited. He gave all. Any soldier could come to him and receive money. It is said that no common soldier went away from him with less than a dollar. When he was on his way to Cartagena, having resigned power forever, when he was writing to Caracas for money, at a time when he had not enough to pay his transportation abroad, he was still giving of his limited resources to all who begged of him.
His ambition was legitimate. In a communication he acknowledged that he was not free from all ambition; but that does not mean that he yielded to it. Virtue does not lie in the absence of temptation, but in fighting it successfully. He was truly ambitious for glory, and when glory is as legitimate as his was, there is no worthier ambition. He was accused by Lorain Petre of craving flattery, and of having been delighted with the homage paid him on his way to Potosí. Great men have been flattered always, and that they are flattered does not mean that they like flattery. Furthermore, there is a certain delicate flattery which every man likes. We, sober-minded Americans, have often heard some of our great men who are still living, even called saints, and we do not feel shocked. After having given life to three countries, one of them composed of three large divisions, Bolívar could receive homage without finding it incongruous or exaggerated.