But, if we explore the literature of Heroism, we shall quickly come to Plutarch, who is its Doctor and historian. To him we owe th...e Brasidas, the Dion, the Epaminodas, the Scipio of old, and I must think we are more deeply indebted to him than to all the ancient writers. Each of his "Lives" is a refutation to the despondency and cowardice of our religious and political theorists. A wild courage, a Stoicism not of the schools, but of the blood, shines in every anecdote, and had given that book immense fame.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetry, and Picture, are Arts of a like nature; and both are busie about imitation. It was excellently said of Plutarch, Poetry wa...s a speaking Picture, and Picture a mute Poesie. For they both invent, faine, and devise many things, and accommodate all they invent to the use, and service of nature. Yet of the two, the Pen is more noble, than the Pencill. For that can speake to the Understanding; the other, but to the Sense.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All his works might well enough be embraced under the title of one of them, a good specimen brick, "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and t...he Heroic in History." Of this department he is the Chief Professor in the World's University, and even leaves Plutarch behind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Burke and Adams had much in common. Adams read Burke's Philosophical Inquiry, for example, as part of his preparation for life and... a career. Burke--who had sympathized with the American Revolution--after all, the patriots were only seeking their rights as Englishmen--became the avowed enemy of the French Revolution. Adams for his part was not only a thinker, he was a doer: a daring patriot, diplomat, vice-president and president. Yet he never abandoned the life of the mind, as his discourse against the French Revolution attests. Burke and Adams had their similar views on events because they each saw man as disposed to selfishness, requiring public institutions to which civic allegiance is owed to restrain those ignoble instincts so that the virtuous side of people would have a chance to flourish. It was, oddly, an optimism based on a pessimistic estimate of human nature.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
John Brown and Giuseppe Garibaldi were contemporaries not solely in the matter of time; their endeavors as liberators link their n...ames where other likeness is absent; and the peaks of their careers were reached almost simultaneously: the Harper's Ferry Raid occurred in 1859, the raid on Sicily in the following year. Both events, however differing in character, were equally quixotic.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »