spite of his pride he is modest; he shrinks from eulogy, he rejects panegyric, he never speaks of himself and never allows anyone else to speak of him; his character equals in grandeur and surpasses in truth that of all other heroes, ancient or modern.16 Curiously enough, the very qualities Charlotte praised in Wellington as making his genius superior to Napoleon’s were precisely those she had ascribed to the much despised mediocrity: self-control, balance, disdain for passionate excess, and resistance to the claims of all but conscience.17 This contradiction was removed in the excision of the
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