Page:Papers on Literature and Art (Fuller).djvu/139

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 * Dire rebel though he was,
 * Yet with a noble nature and great gifts
 * Was he endowed: courage, discretion, wit,
 * An equal temper and an ample soul,
 * Rock-bound and fortified against assaults
 * Of transitory passion, but below
 * Built on a surging subterraneous fire,
 * That stirred and lifted him to high attempts,
 * So prompt and capable, and yet so calm;
 * He nothing lacked in sovereignty but the right,
 * Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.
 * }
 * Built on a surging subterraneous fire,
 * That stirred and lifted him to high attempts,
 * So prompt and capable, and yet so calm;
 * He nothing lacked in sovereignty but the right,
 * Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.
 * }
 * He nothing lacked in sovereignty but the right,
 * Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.
 * }
 * Nothing in soldiership except good fortune.
 * }

That was the grandeur of the character, that its calmness had nothing to do with slowness of blood, but was “built on a surging subterranean fire.”

Its magnanimity is shown with a fine simplicity. To blame one’s self is easy, to condemn one’s own changes and declensions of character and life painful, but inevitable to a deep mind. But to bear well the blame of a lesser nature, unequal to seeing what the fault grows from, is not easy; to take blame as Van Artevelde does, so quietly, indifferent from whence truth comes, so it be truth, is a trait seen in the greatest only.

I have ventured to be the more lavish of extracts that, although