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The greatest of these, our protagonists of freedom, was Benjamin Franklin. After him it were difficult to name the second. It is always difficult to find the second man; for there are several who come after.
They will not be an archaeological restoration, as some of the English protagonists of this great revolution seem to anticipate, they will be variously adapted to the peculiar conditions of a new century, but the basic principles will be preserved.
It is written in somewhat cumbrous ottava rima, and seldom shows any conspicuous power of narrative. Belonging to the same class of composition, though of a very different order of poetic merit, is Lorenzo's wonderfully graceful tale of Ambra. The grace lies in the telling, for the plot was probably already stale when Phoebus and Daphne were protagonists.
It is sufficient to say that this conflict the conduct of which reflects little credit either upon the Irish protagonists or the British Government which alternately pampered and opposed it was ended, for the time at least, by the passing of Mr. Wyndham's Land Act.
The poem is far from being deficient in that human interest which Shelley said that it was as vain to ask from HIM, as to seek to buy a leg of mutton at a gin-shop. The characters, the protagonists, with Cyril, Melissa, Lady Blanche, the child Aglaia, King Gama, the other king, Arac, and the hero's mother beautifully studied from the mother of the poet are all sufficiently human.
The romances in question are the Perlesvaus, the prose Lancelot, and the Chevalier a deux Espees. The respective protagonists being Perceval's sister, Sir Lancelot, and the young Queen of Garadigan, whose city has been taken by King Ris and who dares the venture to win her freedom.
Everywhere, throughout his most deeply characteristic work, he emphasizes this thought he would have us realize that we are the unconscious protagonists of an overshadowing, vast, and august drama whose significance and dénouement we do not and cannot know, but of which mysterious intimations are constantly to be perceived and felt.
Into this vast concourse came Mahomet, a lad of fifteen, eager to see, hear, and know. He was present at the poetic contests, and caught from the protagonists a reflection of their vivid, fitful eloquence, with its ceaseless undercurrent of monotony. Romance, in so far as it represents the love of the strange, is a product of the West.
Not of equal stature are the heroes looming through the curtain Fate drops before each scene of the world's drama when another play begins. There were selfish aims sometimes in the breasts of the patriotic, worldly ambitions in the Reformers, the lust of persecution in the Saints. Yet these great protagonists of history are easy to distinguish among the crowd of actors who have played their parts.
And he nodded over his shoulder toward the tent where the lone man had been sitting. His face as he spoke was lighted by the smile of supreme confidence. They thanked the man for his news and walked slowly back to their camp, Prescott thoughtful all the way. He knew now that the crisis had come. The two great protagonists stood face to face at last.
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