P.
[Footnote 1: See my _Memories_, pp. 46-52 and 55.]
31
MY DEAR ANTONY,
Like the author of the _Peninsular War_, Sir William Butler was great
both as a soldier and as a writer. His autobiography sparkles with
humour, irony, and felicitous diction; but it was in his _Life of
Gordon of Khartoum_ that he rose to his full stature as a contributor
to the glory of English prose.
The spell of Gordon seems to have, as it were, transfigured all who
approached him, and raised them out of themselves. One man alone, of
all those whose lives touched his, has shown that his own pinched and
narrow mediocrity was proof against the radiance of Gordon's spirit,
and has feebly attempted to belittle the soldier saint for his own
justification. But he has failed even to project a spot upon the sun of
Gordon's fame, and he is already forgotten, while the great soldier's
name will endure in the hearts of his countrymen till England and its
people fail.
If Sir William Butler's final noble periods, which I here reproduce, do
not deeply move him who reads them, then must that reader have a
heart of stone:--
"Thus fell in dark hour of defeat a man as unselfish as Sidney, of
courage dauntless as Wolfe, of honour stainless as Outram, of
sympathy wide-reaching as Drummond, of honesty straightforward as
Napier, of faith as steadfast as More.
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