The question having been asked whether Abraham Lincoln was the greatest
man this country ever produced, a contemporary writer signifies his own
view of the matter thus:
“Abraham Lincoln was a great man, but I am inclined to believe that
history will reckon George Washington a greater.”
But that is an appeal to an incompetent arbiter. History has always
elevated to primacy in greatness that kind of men—men of action,
statesmen and soldiers. In my judgment neither of the men mentioned is
entitled to the distinction. I should say that the greatest American
that we know about, if not George Sterling, was Edgar Allan Poe. I
should say that the greatest man is the man capable of doing the most
exalted, the most lasting and most beneficial intellectual work—and the
highest, ripest, richest fruit of the human intellect is indubitably
great poetry. The great poet is the king of men; compared with him, any
other man is a peasant; compared with his, any other man’s work is a
joke. What is it likely that remote ages will think of the comparative
greatness of Shakspeare and the most eminent of all Britain’s warriors
or statesmen? Nothing, for knowledge of the latter’s work will have
perished. Who was the greatest of Grecians before Homer? Because you
are unable to mention offhand the names of illustrious conquerors or
empire-builders of the period do you suppose there were none? Their
work has perished, that is all—as will perish the work of Washington
and Lincoln. But the _Iliad_ is with us.
Their work has perished and our knowledge of it. Why? Because no
greater man made a record of it. If Homer had celebrated their deeds
instead of those of his dubious Agamemnon and impossible Achilles, we
should know about them—all that he chose to tell. For a comparison
between their greatness and his the data would be supplied by himself.
Men of action owe their fame to men of thought. The glory of the ruler,
the conqueror or the statesman belongs to the historian or the poet
who made it. He can make it big or little, at his pleasure; he upon
whom it is bestowed is as powerless in the matter as is any bystander.
If there were no writers how would you know that there was a Washington
or a Lincoln? How would you know that there is a Joseph Choate, who
was American Ambassador to Great Britain, or a Nelson Miles, sometime
Commander of our army? Suppose the writers of this country had in 1896
agreed never again to mention the name of William J. Bryan; where would
have been his greatness?
Great writers make great men or unmake them—or can if they like. They
kindle a glory where they please, or quench it where it has begun to
shine. History’s final judgment of Washington and Lincoln will depend
upon the will of the immortal author who chooses to write of them.
Their deeds, although a thousand times more distinguished, their
popularity, though a thousand times greater, can not save from oblivion
even so much as their names. And nothing that they built will abide. Of
the “topless towers” of empire that the one assisted to erect, and the
other to buttress, not a vestige will remain. But what can efface “The
Testimony of the Suns”? Who can unwrite “To Helen”?
If there had been no Washington, American independence would
nevertheless have been won and the American republic established. But
suppose that he alone had taken up arms. He was neither indispensable
nor sufficient. Without Lincoln the great rebellion would have been
subdued and negro slavery abolished. What kind of greatness is that—to
do what another could have done, what was bound to be done anyhow?
I call it pretty cheap work. Great statesmen and great soldiers are
as common as flies; the world is lousy with them. We recognize their
abundance in the saying that the hour brings the man. We do not say
that of a literary emergency. There the demand is always calling for
the supply, and usually calling in vain. Once or twice in a century, it
may be, the great man of thought comes, unforeseen and unrecognized,
and makes the age and the glory thereof all his own by saying what none
but he could say—delivering a message which none but he could bear. All
round him swarm the little great men of action, laying sturdily about
them with mace and sword, changing boundaries which are afterward
changed back again, serving fascinating principles from which posterity
turns away, building states that vanish like castles of cloud, founding
thrones and dynasties with which Time plays at pitch-and-toss. But
through it all, and after it all, the mighty thought of the man of
words flows on and on with the resistless sweep of “the great river
where De Soto lies”—an unchanging and unchangeable current of eternal
good.
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep;
And Bahram, that great Hunter—the wild ass
Stamps o’er his Head, but can not break his sleep.
But the courts that Omar reared still stand, perfect as when he “hewed
the shaft and laid the architrave.” Not the lion and the lizard—we
ourselves keep them and glory in them and drink deep in them, as did
he. O’er his head, too, that good man and considerable poet, Mr. Edgar
Fawcett, stamped in vain; but a touch on a book, and lo! old Omar is
broad awake and with him wakens Israfel, “whose heart-strings are a
lute.”
Art and literature are the only things of permanent interest in this
world. Kings and conquerors rise and fall; armies move across the
stage of history and disappear in the wings; mighty empires are evolved
and dissolved; religions, political systems, civilizations flourish,
die and, except in so far as gifted authors may choose to perpetuate
their memory, are forgotten and all is as before. But the thought of
a great writer passes from civilization to civilization and is not
lost, although his known work, his very name, may perish. You can
not unthink a thought of Homer, but the deeds of Agamemnon are long
undone, and the only value that he has, the only interest, is that he
serves as material for poets. Of Cæsar’s work only that of the pen
survives. If a statue by Phidias, or a manuscript by Catullus, were
discovered to-day the nations of Europe would be bidding against one
another for its possession to-morrow—as one day the nations of Africa
may bid for a newly discovered manuscript of some one now long dead
and forgotten. Literature and art are about all that the world really
cares for in the end; those who make them are not without justification
in regarding themselves as masters in the House of Life and all others
as their servitors. In the babble and clamor, the pranks and antics
of its countless incapables, the tremendous dignity of the profession
of letters is overlooked; but when, casting a retrospective eye into
“the dark backward and abysm of time” to where beyond these voices
is the peace of desolation, we note the majesty of the few immortals
and compare them with the pigmy figures of their contemporary kings,
warriors and men of action generally—when across the silent battle
fields and hushed _fora_ where the dull destinies of nations were
determined, nobody cares how, we hear,
like ocean on a western beach,
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey—
then we appraise literature at its true value; and how little worth
while seems all else with which Man is pleased to occupy his fussy soul
and futile hands!
1901.