Eight years after Rhodes’s death, his friend Sir Lewis Michell published a two-volume biography of the man he called “one of the greatest Englishmen of the Victorian era.” Rhodes’s final years had been marked by controversy and his lasting reputation was in considerable doubt. Michell’s goal was to establish Rhodes’s claim to a place in the pantheon of great men so that future historians would not be forced to rely on the testimony of Rhodes’s enemies. As you read the introduction to Michell’s biography, ask yourself why Michell thought Rhodes was so worthy of study. What, in Michell’s view, made Rhodes great?

It is not in their lifetime that great men can be judged. Provisional sentence may indeed be passed, but final adjudication at the bar of history is delivered at a much later period, when the dust of current controversies has been laid and events can be distinguished in their true proportions.

But the equity of the ultimate decision may be rendered more certain by a recital of contemporary facts, and for this reason it may well be that the material for the biography of men of exceptional type should be collected before the generation which knew them has entirely passed away. A man who plays a prominent part in the march of a great nation, and especially of a nation distracted by party feuds, while arousing enthusiasm in those who appreciate the boldness of his conceptions, or are admitted to the inner circle of his thoughts, inevitably arouses, also, the animosity of those who misunderstand his policy and reprobate what they consider the impropriety of his methods.

Many a man holds a lower position in the estimation of the world than would be the case had he received justice from contemporary biographers. Who can doubt, for instance, that the reputation of Hannibal has suffered in consequence of its being recorded only by his inveterate foes?

No attempt will be made in these pages that the aspirations of Cecil Rhodes were always practicable, or that his procedure was, on all occasions, commendable; but I apprehend that a sober narration of the facts at my command will not lower him in the eyes of discriminating critics, but will demonstrate, not indistinctly, that he was a great man, great even in his faults, with a passionate belief and pride in the character and destiny of his country to lead the van of civilisation, and with a robust determination to do something in his “time and prime” for the Anglo-Saxon race and for the betterment of humanity.

The historian, who essays to adequately describe the events and tendencies of the last half century, cannot afford to ignore his massive and commanding personality, or fail to investigate the circumstances governing the career of one who, during his brief and meteoric course, inspired affection, and perhaps hatred, to a greater extent than any other conspicuous man of his day.

My aim is to portray the real man as he appeared to his personal friends and to his political opponents: a man of many moods and contrarieties, but always in earnest, always letting the dead past bury its dead, and pushing forward to those things that are before, with never a backward glance or vain regret: a man with many human frailties, but eminently lovable in spite of, or perhaps because of, them.

It may be an arduous task to hold the scales evenly where affection guides the hand. But the attempt will be made to paint a faithful portrait free from exaggerated effects, whether of light or shade: the portrait of a modern Englishman cast in an antique mould, doubtless with the defects of his qualities, but actuated at all times and under all circumstances by an unwavering ambition, not for his own aggrandizement, but for that of the land of his birth and the land of his adoption,

It is in this spirit I desire to write the life of Cecil Rhodes.

Source: Sir Lewis Michell, The Life and Times of the Right Honourable Cecil John Rhodes (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1910), pp. 1–3.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER