en accustomed to make gods and daemons
out of men very little better or worse than themselves; but it appears
contemptible to all who have watched the changes of human character--to
all who have observed the influence of time, of circumstances, and
of associates, on mankind--to all who have seen a hero in the gout, a
democrat in the church, a pedant in love, or a philosopher in liquor.
This practice of painting in nothing but black and white is unpardonable
even in the drama. It is the great fault of Alfieri; and how much it
injures the effect of his compositions will be obvious to every one who
will compare his Rosmunda with the Lady Macbeth of Shakspeare. The one
is a wicked woman; the other is a fiend. Her only feeling is hatred;
all her words are curses. We are at once shocked and fatigued by the
spectacle of such raving cruelty, excited by no provocation,
repeatedly changing its object, and constant in nothing but in its
in-extinguishable thirst for blood.

In history this error is far more disgraceful. Indeed, there is no fault
which so completely ruins a narrative in the opinion of a judicious
reader. We know that the line of demarcation between good and bad men
is so faintly marked as often to elude the most careful investigation
of those who have the best opportunities for judging. Public men, above
all, are surrounded with so many temptations and difficulties that
some doubt must almost always hang over their real dispositions and
intentions. The lives of Pym, Cromwell, Monk, Clarendon, Marlborough,
Burnet, Walpole, are well known to us. We are acquainted with their
actions, their speeches, their writings; we have abundance of letters
and well-authenticated anecdotes relating to them: yet what candid man
will venture very positively to say which of them were honest and which
of them were dishonest men? It appears easier to pronounce decidedly
upon the great characters of antiquity, not because we have greater
means of discovering truth, but simply because we have less means of
detecting error. The modern historians of Greece have forgotten this.
Their heroes and villains are as consistent in all their sayings and
doings as the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins in an allegory. We
should as soon expect a good action from giant Slay-good in Bunyan as
from Dionysius; and a crime of Epaminondas would seem as incongruous
as a faux-pas of the grave and comely damsel called Discretion, who
answered the bell at the