The Marquis of Montrose . nkshim as much superior to Montrose in statesmanshipas he was inferior in the art of war ; and Clarendon,who detested him, said that Argyll wanted onlycourage and honesty to be a very great man. Mon-trose despised him, but then Montrose was apt todespise those whom he did not love. In every national crisis there is some personal an-tagonism, where the warring creeds seem to be summedup in the persons of two protagonists. Caesar andPompey, Pym and Strafford, Fox and Pitt, are familiarinstances. So stood Montrose and Argyll, seculartypes of conflicting temperaments and
The Marquis of Montrose . nkshim as much superior to Montrose in statesmanshipas he was inferior in the art of war ; and Clarendon,who detested him, said that Argyll wanted onlycourage and honesty to be a very great man. Mon-trose despised him, but then Montrose was apt todespise those whom he did not love. In every national crisis there is some personal an-tagonism, where the warring creeds seem to be summedup in the persons of two protagonists. Caesar andPompey, Pym and Strafford, Fox and Pitt, are familiarinstances. So stood Montrose and Argyll, seculartypes of conflicting temperaments and irreconcilableaims. Argyll must always remain one of the mysteriesof history. We can see the man and his doings, butwe cannot see the dream at the back of that patienthead. He had a grim piety of the ascetic kind, butthe mainspring of his actions was not piety. Norwas it a political ideal, for he had no theory of state-craft worth the name. He was the eternal fisher introubled waters, the creature of a mediasval MONTROSE AND ARGYLL. 45 He had the chiefs inordinate love of power, andvisions of a crown may have haunted one who boastedthat he was the eighth man from Robert above all he loved the exercise of his admirablebrain, using the raw material of fanaticism in theministers and of gross self-interest in the nobles toserve his own most unfanatical ends. Physically he was a coward, though like manycowards he plucked up courage to make a good shrinking made him a poor general, and pre-disposed him to win his purpose by peaceful , though pacifically inclined, he had no gentlenessor humanity, and many of the barbarities of theCovenant must be laid to his account. He had noenthusiasm, though he could use its catchwords, andfew principles which were not priced. This freedomfrom the common foibles of mankind made him aterrible antagonist, but it left one chink in his could not realize a motive other than fanaticismor self-interest,
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