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who creates an image of beauty in the mind that was not there before,
imparts knowledge and power to others, in which his greatness and
his fame consists, and on which it reposes. Jedediah Buxton will be
forgotten; but Napier's bones will live. Lawgivers, philosophers,
founders of religion, conquerors and heroes, inventors and great
geniuses in arts and sciences, are great men, for they are great
public benefactors, or formidable scourges to mankind. Among ourselves,
Shakespear, Newton, Bacon, Milton, Cromwell, were great men, for
they showed great power by acts and thoughts, that have not yet been
consigned to oblivion. They must needs be men of lofty stature, whose
shadows lengthen out to remote posterity. A great farce-writer may be
a great man; for Moliere was but a great farce-writer. In my mind, the
author of _Don Quixote_ was a great man. So have there been many others.
A great chess-player is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he
found it. No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness. This will
apply to all displays of power or trials of skill which are confined to
the momentary, individual effort, and construct no permanent image or
trophy of themselves without them. Is not an actor then a great man,
because 'he dies and leaves the world no copy'? I must make an exception
for Mrs. Siddons, or else give up my definition of greatness for her
sake. A man at the top of his profession is not therefore a great man.
He is great in his way, but that is all, unless he shows the marks of
a great moving intellect, so that we trace the master-mind, and can
sympathise with the springs that urge him on. The rest is but a craft or
_mystery_. John Hunter was a great man--_that_ any one might see without
the smallest skill in surgery. His style and manner showed the man.
He would set about cutting up the carcass of a whale with the same
greatness of gusto that Michael Angelo would have hewn a block of
marble. Lord Nelson was a great naval commander; but for myself, I
have not much opinion of a seafaring life. Sir Humphry Davy is a great
chemist, but I am not sure that he is a great man. I am not a bit the
wiser for any of his discoveries, nor I never met with any one that was.
But it is in the nature of greatness to propagate an idea of itself, as
wave impels wave, circle without circle. It is a contradiction in terms
for a coxcomb to be a great man. A really great man has always an
idea of something greater th