Politics and Metaphysics Author:Frank Preston Stearns Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE POETIC NAPOLEON NO great man is complete without the poetic element. It is to be found in Lincoln's Gettysburg address, and in Sumner's solemn affirmation... more » before the Senate: "Thank God for Massachusetts!" It was in the poetic element that Demosthenes surpassed Cicero, and perhaps Webster. Victor Hugo wrote to Garibaldi in his highflown manner, "There was a lyre in the tent of Achilles." J2schylus fought at Salamis and Dante at Campaldino. Frederick the Great sent his verses to Voltaire, "Heroes or Poets." There was not much poetry in Frederick, although he was fond of scribbling verses, and Bismarck was also a rather matter of fact character; but Napoleon was charged with it; although he may never have composed a couplet. His ambitions and successes were poetic, and so were his failures; even his misdeeds (or mistakes) have that appearance. His whole life was like the rising and setting of the sun. His actions were poetic; he talked poetry; he was continually meeting with poetic adventures; his whole life was an epic, and some hundreds of years from now it might become the subject of as grand an epic as Dante's "Inferno" or Milton's "Paradise Lost." The early incidents which Madam Junot relates of him have a poetic character,—the Puss in Boots story, and his mercifulness to Sallicetti because he had taken refuge in the house of Napoleon's friends. Then what a picture we have of this young artillery officer, with the big head andtapering figure, giving the word of command—only one word—which puts an end to the Reign of Terror in Francs. Again we see him in Italy, like Thor fighting the giants, driving armies before him, two or three times the number of his own. We see him leading his men across the bridge of Lodi, and rescued by his devoted followers from the swamps of Ar...« less