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| Style | Artless, earnest, but sober; abrupt, yet long drawn out; practical and moral, like the man; idiomatic in vocabulary and arrangement, showing a strong repugnance to the importation of foreign words, a quality certainly due in part to his object - the instruction of a barbarous audience. |
| Rank | There is no evidence of the imaginative qualities which mark the higher statesman. His sphere of action, indeed, was too narrow to justify his comparison, politically or intellectually, with the immortal few. What really lifts him to their level is the moral grandeur of his life. Nay, his altitude is the greater in proportion as wisdom is above knowledge, and goodness above genius, or spiritual growth above mental culture. Among recorded rulers he is unique. What other has possessed so many virtues with so little aloy? A soldier a stateman, a lawgiver, a lover of learning, and an author of repute; a prince withou personal ambition, all whose wars were fought in his country's defense, who bore adversity with noble fortitude and wore his laurels in noble simplicity, steering the ship of state, with a turbulent crew, through a stormy sea. - there is none like him. Of no other will it ever be said that his is "England's darling." |
| Character | Tradition tells of his genial good nature ... his eager desire for knowledge and the improvement of society. His words, and the books selected as the objects of his chief efforts, indicate strongly the union of zeal with moderation, of practical judgment with serious and elevated sentiment, of untiring industry with eminent piety ... Though simple and kindly in temper, he is a stern inquisitor in executing justice ... Affable and liberal, patient and brave, just, and temperate. |
| Influence | Solicitous of his own enlightenment, he never forgot that his first duty was to his people ... His legislation left imperishable traces upon England ... True the light will wand and flicker. The flood of national calamity, rising ominously during his life, shall seem to sweep utterly away the ripening harvest of Saxon civilization; but force is indestructible; and that spirit of moral strength, felt afar off, lives still beneath the sun, as seed springs from seed. The oak dies, but the acorn lives |
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