VII
OUR LACK OF GREAT MEN
It is often mournfully reiterated that the present age is not an
age of great men, and I have sometimes wondered if it is true. In
the first place I do not feel sure that an age is the best judge of
its own greatness; a great age is generally more interested in
doing the things which afterwards cause it to be considered great,
than in wondering whether it is great. Perhaps the fact that we are
on the look-out for great men, and complaining because we cannot
find them, is the best proof of our second-rateness; I do not
imagine that the Elizabethan writers were much concerned with
thinking whether they were great or not; they were much more
occupied in having a splendid time, and in saying as eagerly as
they could all the delightful thoughts which came crowding to the
utterance, than in pondering whether they were worthy of
admiration. In the annals of the Renaissance one gets almost weary
of the records of brilliant persons, like Leo Battista Alberti and
Leonardo da Vinci, who were architects, sculptors, painters,
musicians, athletes, and writers all in one; who could make crowds
weep by twanging a lute, ride the most vicious horses, take
standing jumps over the heads of tall men, and who were, moreover,
so impressionable that books were to them as jewels and flowers,
and who "grew faint at the sight of sunsets and stately persons.
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