560 STARTING WITH LEAPS AND BOUNDS, men, one sees to all appearances fine flourish-but it ripens not." As in Wordsworth's imagery,— "Not seldom, clad in radiant vest, deceitfully goes forth the Morn; Not seldom Evening in the west sinks smilingly forsworn.” Princes in their infancy, childhood, and youth, observes Dean Swift, are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish: “strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue: if they live, they are often prodigies indeed, but of another sort." The John Robinson of Cakes and Ale is typical as the bright particular star of a school, who might go anywhere, and do anything, if he liked. "I know that," he would answer to admiring friends who told him so; and throughout life he rested content with the barren knowledge. The victim of early impressions, capable of doing twenty things better than seven-tenths of his fellows, he did nothing for that very reason. In literary history, and political, we are for ever coming upon instances like that of William Cartwright, of Christ Church, Oxford, whose fame was so great in the first half of the seventeenth century; who was to be "the most florid and seraphical preacher in the University," and even "the most noted poet, orator, and philosopher of his time." Plays, poems, and sermons of his survive ; but none to account for what now seem such hyperbolic praises. Southey had always such misgivings as to reputations trumpeted forth in this style, because they sometimes upset the bearer, and often indicate more dexterity than strength, that when, in 1833, he heard of the "great expectations" that were being formed of "young Gladstone, the member for Newark, who is said to be the ablest person that Oxford has sent forth for many years, since Peel or Canning," he ENDING IN A DULL JOG TROT. 561 could only hope the young man might not disappoint his friends. The result is matter for History. It is instructive to read of the Archbishop of Canterbury's son, "young Mr. Potter," in 1747, as promising so very greatly in politics that the world, testifies Horace Walpole, "is already matching him against Mr. Pitt." But Potter and Pitt are no longer bracketed as equals; nor indeed were they beyond Horace's time of writing, or thereabouts. Harley l'Estrange and Audley Egerton are thus invidiously compared in Lord Lytton's story, by an interested observer of the career of both "Who that had seen you both as youths, could have thought that Audley was the one to become distinguished and eminent-and Harley to degenerate into the luxurious idler, averse to all trouble and careless of all fame?" For this latter hindrance is at least as efficient a cause, privative or negative, of deficiency and failure in the long run, as what Wordsworth traces to haply a temper too severe, or a "nice backwardness afraid of shame," that results in "favoured beings' failing, as life advances, to approve themselves really greater than their fellows, so that they merely, like the rest, and on a dead level with the rest, live out their time, And go to the grave unthought of." Better, saith the Preacher, is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof; and the patient in spirit, that works to an end, and to the end, than the proud in spirit, impatient almost from the beginning, and starting aside like a broken bow. Finis coronat opus, is the motto of the patient toiler; re infectâ, might be that of the impatient beginner: he begins, and there an end. The pregnant phrase of Tacitus in reference to Galba, has become a proverb: Omnium consensu capax imperii, 562 'OMNIUM CONSENSU CAPAX. nisi imperâsset. The Earl of Lonsdale's motto, Office proves the man, Magistratus indicat virum, is accepted as another, but it is virtually, nay verbally, an adaptation of the sentence attributed to Bias, Solon, and others besides, 'Apxǹ åvdpa delívvтal. Gibbon's verdict passed on Maximus is, that whatever abilities that emperor might have shown in a subordinate station, he was found incapable of administering an empire And of another emperor, later by some eight centuries, the same historian reports, "Michael himself, had he died in a private station, would have been thought more worthy of the empire." If a shrewd, it was also a, friendly critic, who remarked of a late distinguished, prematurely deceased, and much lamented English statesman, that it was, perhaps, better for his fame. that he served in a secondary office, and that many thought him worthy of a still higher rank. Towards the middle of the last century, Carteret was marked out by the public voice for office, and, like Galba, says Earl Stanhope, would ever have been deemed most worthy of power if he had not actually attained it Some princes are transformed into beings just short of perfection, simply because supreme power must ever be beyond their reach; and such, according to M. Beulé, was the case with both Drusus and Germanicus, whom he consigns to the numerous category of princes who promise much before the sceptre has fallen into their hands, but whose actions do not correspond to the hopes they raised, and who retain the affection of their contemporaries only on condition that they are not put to the test. M. Beulé represents father and son, in his historical treatise entitled Le Sang de Germanicus, as deriving all their reputation and their popularity from the mere fact that, under a bad system of government, when tyranny with its worst features is upon the throne, IMPERII NISI IMPERÅSSET? 563 the multitude are wont, as a Saturday Reviewer puts it, to idealize those who stand next to the ruler, and yet who can scarcely hope to succeed him. When the Archduke Maximilian went to Mexico, it may have seemed to him certain that he would make a good, and probably a successful, emperor. Before the catastrophe came, friendly critics in all quarters were agreed that it might be said of him, that he would have been capable of being an emperor if he had not been one. Don Quixote tells the bachelor Sampson Carrasco, "Undoubtedly I have known many that have enjoyed considerable reputation for their talents in writing, until, by publishing, they have either injured or entirely lost their fame." Mr. Savage's Primrose used to maintain that for rising in the world there was no better plan than to do nothing, provided you have once got a general reputation for talent. His notion was, that it is better to rest on the character one has, than to expose it it to hazard, by continually giving envy something to carp at. The men that succeed best, he would say, are those who contrive to get a little clique about them, who cry them up, not for what they actually do, but what they could do if they would only take the trouble. We read of Mr. Medlicott, that throughout his life it was his fortune to be thought capable of achieving anything, while in fact he was achieving nothing but that unsolid praise which is so easily silenced by the simple question, What has he done? But it is a true saying, that a man with ever so small pretensions to intellectual eminence must be worth very little if those who are intimate with him, and love him, do not honestly believe that the work which he has actually done is mere child's-play compared with that which it is in him to do, if only this or that happy contingency had come to pass. 564 EPIMENIDES THE CRETAN: Arthur Hugh Clough's was confessedly the familiar case of a boy who outshines and surpasses other boysof a young man whose life seems full of promise-and then of a grown man in whom the promise seems to fade away, and who, if he does anything to reveal his powers to the outer world, does far less than his friends hoped for. Common in every age and clime is the type of social favourite portrayed in Wordsworth's Excursion, for whom every fancy shaped fair expectations,— "But all hopes Cherished for him, he suffered to depart, Like blighted buds ; or clouds that mimicked land That sparkling decked the morning grass; or aught IF LI. ALWAYS LIARS. TITUS i. 12. F the psalmist went further, in saying that all men are liars, than did Epimenides the Cretan, in saying it of the Cretans only; on the other hand, what the psalmist said was in his haste, whereas the Greek said his say in leisure-with deliberate emphasis and epigrammatic point. "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own, said, The Cretans are always liars." Commentators remark that although popτns may be used simply of a poet, yet has it a peculiar propriety as applied by St. Paul to Epimenides, who is called ȧvnp Ocios by Plato, and is described by Cicero as futura præsentiens, et vaticinans per furorem; and again, "Concitatione quadam animi, aut soluto liberoque motu, |