Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Life, Letters, and Diaries of Sir Stafford Northcote, First Earl of Iddesleigh, Vol. 1 of 2
Mankind, says Alexandre Dumas, have for six-thou sand years been hooting at this divine drama of the world; for myself, I shall never cease to applaud it. Sir Stafford would probably never have expressed his thought about the world in this fashion, but the attitude of Dumas was his. He did not quarrel with life, nor with his part in the play: he was as ignorant of discontent as Nelson was of fear. His part he played to the very best of his ability, but for its own sake, not for the sake of any prizes. In later life the part was not always that which he might have chosen, that for which he might have hoped; but he never for a moment allowed regret or ambition to divert his loyalty. No one could injure him by thwarting him: though he was not a reader of the Imperial Stoic, he unconsciously lived in the belief that he was not to be harmed by any man, nor by any in?u ence from without. This is the happy warrior in the cruel war of politics, and this he was. His tranquillity was his strength, and this tranquillity could not exist in the same heart with love of self, with a selfish and exclu sive ambition.
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