40. THE NIGHT BEFORE NASEBY. (August Leopold Egg, A.)

The Royal Academy Exhibition 1859

An interesting contribution to the store of hints for better understanding of English history which painters and poets are now continually throwing out for us. This scene is, however, hardly strange enough to have the look of reality:  it is what we should, or could, all imagine about Cromwell; while most likely, if we had really been able to look into his tent the night before Naseby, the look of him would have been something different from what we should have imagined. A picture which is not at first a little wonderful to us, can hardly at last be true to us.

(Extraña conexión entre verdad y “maravilla”, es como si dijera que no tiene, o no suele haber, correspondencia entre lo imaginado o pensado según tópicos, lo que esperaríamos en la realidad, y lo que realmente sucede, que resultaría más chocante si pudieramos verlo. Lo inesperado o sorpredente, o maravilloso, sería una pista de la verdad, y no lo acostumbrado, lo esperado.)