It is the breadth and completeness of this character which chiefly claims our admiration. Men of power,—men of remarkable talents, are met with again and again in the world’s history; but, unhappily, most of the greatest are also found among the meanest; while too many of the good are obliged to ask for our pity or our indulgence. We perceive Edward’s character to be one of unusual excellence, so soon as we begin to search for a superior or an equal.
We naturally think, in the first place, of the great Saxon king, who, four centuries before Edward’s day, did so much to raise England out of the slough of ignorance and semi‐barbarism in which she was grovelling. But we can no more institute a comparison between Alfred and Edward, than we can weigh the respective merits of Alfred and of Arthur. The hero of the sixth century can only be clearly discerned through the thick darkness of that gloomy period. Alfred might be better seen and more truly appreciated; but it was but partially and doubtfully; as we strive to discern objects through the mists of the early dawn. He fought battles and gained victories; but of the places so distinguished, we know next to nothing. He died, and was buried, we believe, at Winchester, but “his grave no man knoweth.”[183] How can we, then, rationally institute a comparison between a hero who is so imperfectly delineated, and a king whose words and actions are as familiar to us as those of Elizabeth or the third William?
Still, if any one prefers to maintain the belief that Alfred was the greatest of all kings, and almost of all men, we shall not quarrel with his opinion. We merely express a doubt, whether our knowledge is sufficient to warrant such positive language. We think that it is not.
As to the other “heroes” of ancient, or mediæval, or modern days, they seem to us to fall far below Edward’s standard. An Alexander, at the head of his irresistible phalanx, can march through Asia, no enemy being able to stand before him; but his own passions conquer him in turn. Two friends are put to death on suspicion, and a third is slain by his own hand in the excitement of drunkenness. Cæsar infinitely surpassed Alexander. He killed a million of men for his own aggrandizement. He was great as a soldier, and still greater as a statesman. But Cæsar knew neither religion nor morals. He believed this life to be the end of man; and naturally he indulged in sensual pleasures “without shame or scruple.”[184] We will not do Edward the injustice to compare him with such men as these.
Coming nearer to his own age, we find a Charlemagne, unquestionably great in council and in war. But the historian cannot help censuring “his cruelty and his excessive dissoluteness.”[185] In private life he was utterly licentious, and in war he could massacre four thousand men—not in a battle, or in the storming of a city, but like a butcher in a slaughter‐house.
Another Charles, of great power and great success, arose in Europe after a lapse of two centuries. But what shall we say of a man who, after a successful, but an immoral and treacherous life, brought himself to the grave at the age of fifty‐eight, by excessive gluttony?
Still later, at the opening of the present century, we saw a greater soldier and a greater statesman than either Charlemagne or Charles V. In Napoleon we had a loftier genius than either Alexander or Cæsar,—a conqueror who marched from Rome to Poland, from Madrid to Moscow; and who, at Dresden, in 1812, “was waited upon by a crowd of obsequious kings or princes, who accepted every word that fell from his lips, as if an oracle had spoken.”[186] And yet it has been truly observed that this autocrat of Europe “had not the merit of common truth and honesty; he would steal, slander, assassinate, as his interest dictated. He was intensely selfish; he was perfidious. In short, when you had penetrated through all this immense power and splendour, you found that you were dealing with an impostor and a rogue.”[187]
We cannot measure or balance the king of whom we have been writing, with such characters as these. He is altogether of another class. Casting our eyes among men of honour,—men of conscience, men worthy of our respect, in our search for a superior or an equal, we have not yet succeeded in our quest. We relinquish the task, therefore, here, and hand it over to our readers.