II
NAPOLEON AND PERICLES
Two powerful nations have been vitally affected by natural calamities. The former of these calamities was inevitable by human prudence, and uncontrollable by human skill; the latter was to be foreseen at any distance by the most ignorant, and to be avoided by the most unwary. I mean in the first the Plague of the Athenians; in the second the starvation of the French. The first happened under the administration of a man transcendently brave; a man cautious, temperate, eloquent, prompt, sagacious, above all that ever guided the councils and animated the energies of a state; the second under a soldier of fortune, expert and enthusiastic; but often deficient in moral courage, not seldom in personal; rude, insolent, rash, rapacious; valuing but one human life among the myriads at his disposal, and that one far from the worthiest, in the estimation of an honester and a saner mind.
It is with reluctant shame I enter on a comparison of such a person and Pericles. On one hand we behold the richest cultivation of the most varied and extensive genius; the confidence of courage, the sedateness of wisdom, the stateliness of integrity; on the other, coarse manners, rude language, violent passions continually exploding, a bottomless void on the side of truth, and a rueful waste on that of common honesty.... So many pernicious faults were not committed by Xerxes or Darius, whom ancient historians call feeble princes, as were committed by Napoleon, whom the modern do not call feeble, because he felt nothing for others, coerced pertinaciously, promised rashly, gave indiscriminately, looked tranquilly, and spoke mysteriously. Even in his flight, signalized by nothing but despondency, Segur, his panegyrist, hath clearly shown that, had he retained any presence of mind, any sympathy, or any shame, he might have checked and crippled his adversary. One glory he shares with Trajan and with Pericles, and neither time nor malice can diminish it. He raised up and rewarded all kinds of merit, even in those arts to which he was a stranger. In this indeed he is more remarkable, perhaps more admirable, than Pericles himself, for Pericles was a stranger to none of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Hofer had led the Tyrolese insurrection against Napoleon's government in 1809, gaining victories at Sterzing, Innsbruck and Isel. He became the head of the government of the Tyrol which for two months maintained her freedom.
CHARLES LAMB
Born in The Temple, London, 1775, died in 1834; his father the clerk of a bencher in the Inner Temple; entered Christ Hospital in 1782, where he met Coleridge and remained seven years; became a clerk in the South Sea House in 1789, and in the India House in 1792; his sister, Mary Lamb, in a fit of temporary insanity, killed their mother in 1796, Charles becoming her guardian for the remainder of her life; began to publish verse in 1796; published "Rosamond Gray" in 1798, a two-act farce produced at Drury Lane in 1805, "Tales from Shakespeare," in which his sister shared the labor with him, in 1807; and essays in various magazines, first collected in 1823 as the "Essays of Elia"; went abroad with his sister in 1822; retired from the India House with a pension of £441 in 1825; published the "Last Essays of Elia" in 1833.