The last and the worst of the Cid ballads are those which betray by their frigid conceits and feeble mimicry of the antique the false taste and essentially unheroic spirit of the age of Philip II.
To this theory the objection is raised that it is but a theory; that it is unsupported by any convincing evidence; and that the process which it postulates, that, namely, of the transformation of the gods into heroes by the popular imagination, is contrary to all that we know of the fate of dethroned deities, who are apt to live on in fairy stories in very unheroic guise.
Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite understand him.
And certainly Manning does betray in these autobiographical fragments an unheroic sensitiveness to the verdict of posterity on his career.