which, though its head towers above those of its companions when they are on the same level, yet has not taken a sufficiently high platform, to see what passes around or above it. Strafford’s strength cannot redeem his infatuation, while he struggles; vanquished, not overwhelmed, he is a majestic figure, whose features[1] are well marked in various passages.
Compared with him, whom I for eighteen years
Have seen familiar as my friend, all men
Seem but as chance-born flies, and only he
Great Nature's chosen and all-gifted son.
[2]Van Artevelde also bears testimony to the belief of the author, that familiarity breeds no contempt, but the reverse in the service of genuine nobility. A familiarity of eighteen years will not make any but a stage hero, other than a hero to his valet de chambre.
King Charles says,
To pass the bill,—
Under his eye, with that fixed quiet look
Of imperturbable and thoughtful greatness,
I cannot do it.
Strafford himself says, on the final certainty of the king’s desertion,
Dear Everard, peace! for there is nothing here
I have not weighed before, and made my own.
- ↑
“A poet, who was present, exclaimed,
On thy brow
Sate terror mixed with wisdom, and at once
Saturn and Hermes in thy countenance.”
Life of Strafford, p. 338.Certainly there could not be a more pointed and pregnant account given of the man than is suggested by this last line.
- ↑
That with familiarity respect
Doth slacken, is a word of common use;
I never found it so.
Philip Van Artevelde, 2d Part, p. 29.
