Moreover, with all his originality of conception and power of execution, Cæsar lacked that kind of imagination which makes the true poet, the real creative artist in literature. Thus we observe the entire absence of the pictorial element in his writings. There is no trace of his ever being affected by the spectacular incidents of warfare nor by the grandeur of the natural scenes through which he passed. The reason may be that his intellect was absorbed in the contemplation of men and motives, of means and ends. We cannot conceive of his ever having been carried out of himself by the rapture of inspiration. Such clearness of mental perception is naturally accompanied by a certain coolness of temperament. A man of superlative greatness must live more or less alone among his fellows. With his immense grasp of the relations of things in the world, Cæsar cannot have failed to regard men to some extent as the counters in a great game--himself the player. So he used men, finding them instruments--efficient and zealous, often--of his far-reaching plans. He was just in rewarding their services--more than just: he was generous and kind. But he did not have real associates, real friends; therefore it is not surprising that he met with so little gratitude. Even his diction shows this independence, this isolation. It would be difficult to find an author of any nation in a cultivated age so free from the influence of the language of his predecessors. Cæsar was unique among the great Roman writers in having been born at the capital. Appropriately he is the incarnation of the specifically Roman spirit in literature, as Cicero was the embodiment of the Italian, the Hellenic, the cosmopolitan spirit. Toward the close of Cæsar's career there are some signs of weariness observable--a certain loss of serenity, a suspicion of vanity, a dimming of his penetrating vision into the men about him. The only wonder is that mind and body had not succumbed long before to the prodigious strain put upon them. Perhaps it is well that he died when he did, hardly past his prime. So he went to his setting, like the other "weary Titan," leaving behind him a brightness which lasted all through the night of the Dark Ages. Cæsar died, but the imperial idea of which he was the first embodiment has proved the central force of European political history even down to our time.