Test of his character.
Not a creator of ideas.
The very domination of this man in the history of two hemispheres warrants us in estimating him by an austere sense of occasions lost and of opportunities embraced. The really great man is superior to his age, and anticipates its future; not as a sudden apparition, but as the embodiment of a long growth of ideas of which he is the inheritor and the capable exemplar. Humboldt makes this personal domination of two kinds. The one comes from the direct influence of character; the other from the creation of an idea, which, freed from personality, works its controlling mission by changing the face of things. It is of this last description that Humboldt makes the domination of Columbus. It is extremely doubtful if any instance can be found of a great idea changing the world's history, which has been created by any single man. None such was created by Columbus. There are always forerunners whose agency is postponed because the times are not propitious. A masterful thought has often a long pedigree, starting from a remote antiquity, but it will be dormant till it is environed by the circumstances suited to fructify it. This was just the destiny of the intuition which began with Aristotle and came down to Columbus. To make his first voyage partook of foolhardiness, as many a looker-on reasonably declared. It was none the less foolhardy when it was done. If he had reached the opulent and powerful kings of the Orient, his little cockboats and their brave souls might have fared hard for their intrusion. His blunder in geography very likely saved him from annihilation.
His character differently drawn.
Prescott.
Irving.
The character of Columbus has been variously drawn, almost always with a violent projection of the limner's own personality. We find Prescott contending that "whatever the defects of Columbus's mental constitution, the finger of the historian will find it difficult to point to a single blemish in his moral character." It is certainly difficult to point to a more flagrant disregard of truth than when we find Prescott further saying, "Whether we contemplate his character in its public or private relations, in all its features it wears the same noble aspects. It was in perfect harmony with the grandeur of his plans, and with results more stupendous than those which Heaven has permitted any other mortal to achieve." It is very striking to find Prescott, after thus speaking of his private as well as public character, and forgetting the remorse of Columbus for the social wrongs he had committed, append in a footnote to this very passage a reference to his "illegitimate" son. It seems to mark an obdurate purpose to disguise the truth. This is also nowhere more patent than in the palliating hero-worship of Irving, with his constant effort to save a world's exemplar for the world's admiration, and more for the world's sake than for Columbus's.
Irving at one time berates the biographer who lets "pernicious erudition" destroy a world's exemplar; and at another time he does not know that he is criticising himself when he says that "he who paints a great man merely in great and heroic traits, though he may produce a fine picture, will never present a faithful portrait." The commendation which he bestows upon Herrera is for precisely what militates against the highest aims of history, since he praises that Spanish historian's disregard of judicial fairness.
In the being which Irving makes stand for the historic Columbus, his skill in softened expression induced Humboldt to suppose that Irving's avoidance of exaggeration gave a force to his eulogy, but there was little need to exaggerate merits, if defects were blurred.