The Curbing of Personality

I

IN June of this year, Paderewski paid his much-advertised and eagerly awaited return visit to London. Such is the power of the Press to-day that if it is sufficiently clamorous it can secure for almost anybody a rousing reception. As it sounded its trumpets and beat its drums enthusiastically for Paderewski, the master had no reason to complain of the popular homage paid to him. But amid the din of the tinkling and brazen instruments, the still small voice of criticism could be distinctly heard. In the modern temple of popular idolatry, one dissident worshiper robs the shrine of its mystery and the incense of its power. And Paderewski had his critics. Thus the musical critic of the Morning Post said: —

With Poland’s first musician interpreted by Poland’s second, it was time to expect great things. What we received was great piano-playing in moments or periods, and the influence of a great personality from beginning to end. M. Paderewski’s playing dates from a time when the artist could say, and was expected to say: ‘La musique, c’est moi’; and it is a wonder that so little of this feeling survives in Lis playing of today. It shows how far he rose above the contemporaries of his youth. Yet what little does survive of the autocratic pianist is noticeable to-day when we consider, say, a Chopin player the greater the more he gives us Chopin from the inside. M. Paderewski’s willfulness could be disturbing at times. Did he see a languorous vision where Chopin wrote a romantic tale? Yes; so he spelled out the A-flat Ballade in backboneless recitative. But he spelled it out finely. M. Paderewski can make the wrong right in his own case; and he does so much that is right to the core, that we forgive him a number of things — his toneless fortissimos, his strange tendency to fidget with a rhythm, and his way of turning sweetness into insipidity by letting his left hand speak before the right.

Other critics were much more outspoken, and the ultimate impression left on London, and perhaps on Paderewski himself, was that the master was not a god but a man.

A greater than the Polish pianist followed him shortly afterward to hospitable London. Eleonora Duse is one of the world’s greatest artists and her art is enduring because it is intelligent. The years have whitened her hair and made her body as fragile as a flower, but they have not dimmed her alert and bright intelligence. The crowds that flocked to see her were less demonstrative than those which applauded Paderewski (the homage paid to pianists and politicians is more vociferous than that given to any other mortals), but their appreciation was none the less impressive and sincere. But there again the still small voice would make itself heard. Thus the critic of the Daily News said: —

According to Eleonora Duse the mother of Ibsen’s Ghosts was a lady of great sorrows. From the very first, in her long conversation with Pastor Manders (who is even more tiresome in Italian than in English) she is a living epitome of all sorrows.

The deep strange eyes, the mobile mouth, and the strained and sensitive forehead — all were eloquent of sorrow. This Mrs. Alving had not lived down her tragedy; its emotions were still smouldering, and they had seared her nature beyond all recovery.

A less great actress, playing the part in that way, would not have been able to rise to the climax of the first act, when her son’s philandering with Regina makes the ghosts of the past walk once again.

Duse had the tragedy, as she had conceived it, clearly in her mind. She rose easily from climax to climax, and nothing could have been more heart-rending than her agony when her son had shrunk into a helpless imbecile.

You must make allowances, of course, for the Latin expression of emotion.

Both Duse and Memo Benassi (who gave a fine performance of Oswald) indulged in tears. I am not sure that their frenetic emotion helped Ibsen’s play, for the strength of that last act lies in its suggestion rather than in its realization of terrible emotion.

And this to some extent may be urged in criticism of Duse ‘s Mrs. Alving. As a whole, in the first act, before the ghosts walk, she has always seemed to me a woman who has lived down her tragedy by having courageously faced it.

So far from suggesting present sorrow, Mrs. Alving really imagines she is about to begin a new life with her boy at home, and with her mind more or less at peace.

Dramatically, too, Mrs. Alving should he a more cheerful person than Duse makes her, so that the sudden opening of the old wounds should he too painful to bear.

It is the reaction from this and from Manders’s narrow views of life and morality that makes the mother ready to do anything to give her son some of the joy of life for which he craves.

As I have said, Duse managed to achieve the climax of the first act, but it did not come with quite the force of contrast Ibsen intended.

Duse played the part as if Mrs. Alving knew the end of her drama. But, apart from that slight misconception (possibly I had too rigid a preconception of what Mrs. Alving should be), Duse gave a wonderful performance.

And the other critics took much the same line. Duse, in her royal way, of course could do no wrong; but at the same time, so it was murmured, she took liberties with the character she represented. She turned her back (but oh, so gracefully!) on the accepted traditional renderings and carried the audience away to those realms of aristocratic sufferings which only Duse knows. The audience went gladly enough, but the still small voice protested. The voice had its own opinion about the play, about its general environment, about the rights and responsibilities of the other players, and also about the obvious intentions of the dramatist. Duse was of course magnificent, but she was not omnipotent. Ibsen had to be considered. So had the other characters. And, despite the blinding flashes of superb genius, criticism would persist in delving into what Ibsen really meant by the message of Ghosts, and, despite the overwhelming force of this strange exotic Mrs. Alving, criticism also would worry about Parson Manders and the diseased son and the other members of that melancholy household. In a word, even with a Duse on the boards, the play was the thing.

Now it seems to me that this attitude of critical London to two such established celebrities as Paderewski and Duse is symptomatic of our age. Edith Cavell said, ‘ Patriotism is not enough,’ and we say, ‘Personality is not enough.’ We are neither afraid of nor blinded by personality, even should it take that form where its expression is most appealing, most temperamental, most dramatic, most direct, namely that of a piano virtuoso. That is where we differ so fundamentally both from the Elizabethans and from the Victorians. Shakespeare was passionately interested in great men. He flattered them as he flattered women, and in his attitude to both there was much idolatry. The Victorians were heroworshipers unashamed. They took their hats off in the presence of human greatness, and talked even about their offspring and their domestic habits in solemn whispers. Thirty years ago, there was scarcely a single cottage in Scotland which had not on its walls a portrait of Mr. Gladstone; and when he died, Conservatives and Liberals united in wondering whether the world would survive his decease. Sir Henry Irving was an actor greater than any play in which he acted. Indeed, he was no more criticized than a bishop in the pulpit is interrupted. He was a god deigning to appear before men, and even to-day men talk of him as the last of the Romans.

Around the skirts of all those men and women — Tennyson, Browning, Dickens, Arnold, Gordon, Newman, Manning, and Florence Nightingale — hang to this day the incense and reverence of the temple. They were not enjoyed, they were worshiped; and even detraction was a form of praise. Religious minds saw in them manifestations of the mercy and good-will of Providence, and skeptics found in their greatness and fame an adequate compensation for the lack of a comprehensible Deity.

How different we are to-day! Early this year, Charles I, a play of Wills, in which Irving added to his reputation, was revived in London. It was laughed off the boards in about a week. Critics simply could not understand how such rubbish could ever have been produced. Even if Irving himself had returned to the boards, it is doubtful if the public would have tolerated such poor stuff, and most certainly the critics would have rebelled. The actor of the type of Irving is dead — not only the man himself but the type. On the London stage of to-day, a gentleman coming more and more into prominence, and known as the producer, has with his emphatic wand destroyed that thrilling world where great personalities ruled. A producer to-day thinks of ensemble, of measure, of restraint. He is the drillsergeant of the footlights; he interprets for the dramatist and often improves on him. He is the conductor with the baton, and all the orchestra, even the first violin, has to obey.

And wayward, irresistible, tyrannical genius cannot live in such an atmosphere. There is no room in a modern London play for actors of the type of Irving. They would wreck the elaborate structure and scatter to the winds that modern conception of artistic unity so carefully sought by the dramatist and so eagerly demanded by the critics. For this unity is found, not in the concentration of all attention on the absorbing genius of one man, but on the interplay of character, on the fitting of many parts into one perfect whole — in a word, on design rather than on personality. And because the setting for the great personality is absent, the great personality is absent, too. Our best-known actors and actresses, like Sir Gerald du Maurier and Miss Gladys Cooper, are described as ‘favorites,’ and that word admirably defines their power and their position. These players do not reign, and the allegiance accorded to them is limited. Sir Gerald is, in the main, a woman’s actor, and Miss Cooper, despite her industry and ability, has yet to show that she can hold an audience by herself alone, that is to say, without the help of some actor of recognized standing. Certainly her greatest successes have been won in association with actors of the type of Mr. Dennis Eadie, the late Sir Charles Haw trey, and Mr. Franklin Dyall.

It is interesting to note, too, that many of our most popular actors are also able producers; to mention, for instance, Hawtrey and Mr. Matheson Lang. Now the whole art of the production of a play lies in the subordination of the part to the whole, and the strict disciplining of all members of the caste, including the stars, to a pattern, a fixed scheme, an ensemble. Actors of the reputation of Mr. Lang, who often produce for other companies than their own, are thereby inclined to think much about teamwork. They subordinate themselves to others; and they thereby recognize that personality has its restraints.

The same tendency is apparent in Grand Opera. The best musical thought in England to-day frankly deplores the star system. At the ‘Old Vic,’ the home of popular opera in London, there are no stars. At this year’s season of the British National Opera Company at Covent Garden likewise there were no stars; and in that connection musical critics were inclined to compare its performances favorably with those at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, where at enormous expense stars are drawn together and made, so they say, the principal source of attraction. I have had no opportunity of testing this verdict personally, but most certainly at Covent Garden this year the absence of ‘magnetic personality’ on the part of the singers, and the small encouragement given by either management, critics, or public to any ‘display’ by any individual member of the company, was most noticeable. A ‘Melba night,’ interpolated once or twice during the season, came as a strange reminder of olden days: of royal and other boxes filled by celebrities to welcome one singer; of criticisms which spoke of Melba and Melba only; of a studied indifference to the opera and its composer; and of the gesticulating, eager crowd, intent on the worship of one single compelling golden voice. To-day we call ourselves critics first and worshipers second; we cheer Melba, but we reflect as well as cheer.

The music-hall is an even better illustration of the argument I have been putting forward. The very soul of the old British music-hall was the personality of one or two great stars. Artists like Vesta Tilley, Marie Lloyd, George Robey, Sir Harry Lauder, depended entirely on their own selves for their effects. They were giants who despised the assistance of pigmies, and like proud and jealous gods they presided over their Olympus alone. Their achievements were terrific. They would enter a music-hall stage and in an instant capture the imagination of an audience. The response was not only whole-hearted, but instant. In a brief second playgoers and players were one. Those superb creatures seemed to say: ‘Here I am with no assistants, no scenery, my only help some willing slaves below there, called an orchestra. But my authority, my fascination are such that I subdue your wills to mine and compel you to hang on every word I utter and every bar I sing. And at the end your obedience will be paid in rounds of cheers and in Homeric laughter.’

But that old music-hall is going, if it has not already gone. When Marie Lloyd died, nearly all the critics recognized that with her died an epoch. Nobody could quite take the place of Marie. The swagger, the gusto, the superb self-confidence, the bigness about her, the easy, almost contemptuous sense of mastery, the disdain for coöperation of any kind, the suggestion in every movement of the limbs, in every gesture of the beautiful commanding hands, in the wink of that luscious and authoritative eye, that l’état c’est moi, have gone. The spell has been broken, and in the congregation to-day there are more critics than worshipers.

Indeed, where is the congregation? Marie is in her grave, and her audiences are at the cinema, where personality is watered and amputated, and where between us and the god intervenes the photographer. And even in those music-halls which still hold out, like the London Coliseum, for example, the personality of one great figure is rarely exercised, and in its place have come troupes of dancers, excerpts from operas, and Scottish players, and Irish players, and French players, where the effect produced is that of ensemble. The music-hall of our fathers has fallen on evil days. At this moment, the owners of music-halls who were foolish enough to make long contracts with stars during the boom years that followed the war do not know what to do with them. For they fail to draw. And in the provinces of England, music-halls are invariably handed over to some revue company, not because English audiences are particularly fond of revues, but because revue managers are prepared to share so much of the profit and so much of the loss with music-hall owners, at a time when ‘business, old chap, is bad.’ Thus has passed something very characteristic of English life. The star of yesterday seems to be failing because no eyes are turned toward his firmament. Something has gone. The old intimacy between the priest and his worshipers has snapped, and instead of the obedience and spontaneity of the child, there has come into these entertainments the skepticism and boredom of the man.

II

It must not be inferred, of course, that human personality is declining. But the relations between personality and the multitude are changing. The element of idolatry, so marked in the mind of thinkers and in the psychology of the crowd of the last century, has given place to curiosity. In the presence of those who have raised themselves above the herd, we do not so much worship as gape; and, whereas our fathers were abashed, we, their children, are merely inquisitive. The dominating trait in English social life at the moment is an intense prying curiosity which takes extraordinary forms at times. The popularity of the Royal Family to-day is beyond any doubt, but it. is a very different manifestation on the part of the people from the reverence and awe with which Queen Victoria and, in his later days, King Edward were regarded. The attitude of the average citizen toward the King and other members of the Royal Family is not that of the led toward its leaders, but that of men who know that those who represent the State and all that is magnificent and dazzling in public life also share the domestic joys and sorrows of the humblest of their subjects. Certain barriers have gone, and in our loyalty there is a feeling almost of equality and of a sense of comradeship evoked by men and women and boys and girls who, despite their high position and titles, have gone through much that we have gone through.

The feeling of loyalty differentiates the Royal Family from other celebrities; but in regard to all the others this feeling of curiosity dominates everything else. That explains the comparative ease with which pushing men and women can creep into public notice to-day. It also explains how brief is their sojourn there. For when idolatry goes out by the door, caprice creeps in by the window.

We are all eager to see the latest lion, and when we have examined him and his mate and his cage, we turn away, half-amused, half-bored, and look out for another. To my mind, there is nothing more symptomatic of the attitude of the English people of to-day toward distinction of any kind than the great international lawntennis matches at Wimbledon. McLoughlin comes along and is replaced by Tilden, and Tilden in his turn is replaced by Johnston. Next year, America may send somebody to replace Johnston. Nobody cares. The crowd will pay its homage, so long as the idol fulfills the clearly defined requirements of the crowd and maintains that efficiency which can be as easily measured as a suit of clothes. Mlle. Lenglen holds her own, because her efficiency has stood the tests of several annual contests. There is something symptomatic of all modern life in the precise tests, the utilitarian standards, and the rapid and brutal forgetfulness of the Wimbledon lawn-tennis courts. McLoughlin was a mere name when Tilden appeared and the sun of Johnston made a shadow of Tilden. All those people, we say, are our servants. We applaud them, but we also judge them; and when they fail to reach to our rigid standards, we throw them aside. We treat our great men and women almost as if they were lawn-tennis players. We subject them to certain rules and requirements, and tell them in so many words precisely what we expect from them and what penalty will await them if they fail to meet our wishes. In all this there is something essentially modern; and whatever else it may be, it is fundamentally different from the hero-worship of our immediate forefathers.

III

I have dealt at some length with the problem of personality on the modern stage, because there is no better instrument than the stage for recording those subtle changes which pass across society. And what is true in this respect of one side of the footlights is also true of the other. In modern politics, for instance, personality counts for much less than it used to do even fifteen years ago. There was nothing more insistent and more pathetic in the earlier stages of the war than the cry for a man. ‘Give us a leader,’ said anxious England, ‘and we shall follow him gladly to the grave.’ The sincerity of that cry was primarily responsible for the fall of Mr. Asquith. Mr. Lloyd George, it was said, had personality; and so he had, and moreover he made the most of it. Indeed, he was generally accepted as the man who won the war, though, on the other hand, some of those who were instrumental in bringing him into power are now of opinion that, far from winning it, the impatient Welshman nearly lost it. Compare, for example, the unquestioned supremacy of Chatham or Bismarck as war leaders with the precarious hold which Mr. Lloyd George obtained over public opinion in England. No man knew better than the ex-Prime Minister how feeble in reality was his grip on the British people, and how transitory was the homage paid to him. That was why he insisted on having his general election before the Peace Conference, at a time when men’s minds were warm and generously inclined. That was why he tried to have another general election before, and not after, the conference at Genoa, and why he knew that, when Sir George Younger (now Viscount Younger), the chief of the Conservative machine, opposed that plan, his doom was sealed. At this moment, the political stock of Mr. Lloyd George is almost as low as the German mark. He has done his work, says the crowd, and there is no further need for him.

The dramatic eclipse of Dr. Wilson is a much more striking example of the brief and feeble hold which personality has on modern democracies. There may have been some hesitation concerning the man who won the war, but at one moment the peoples of Europe undoubtedly believed that Dr. Wilson was the man who would win the peace. The receptions accorded to the former President of the United States in London, Paris, and Rome were something new and startling in the history of modern Europe, and one must go back to the triumphs of the most victorious soldiers of ancient Rome to find anything comparable to the wild hopes and boundless gratitude and admiration heaped by a weary Europe on the man who spoke with authority. But transient indeed was that authority. Dr. Wilson was the lonely man of the Peace Conference of Paris. There he sat in that gilded and mirrored council chamber of the Quai d’Orsay, a solitary, impressive, Miltonic figure, a Samson meditating among chattering Philistines, a determined prophet with a beneficent purpose, formulating his policies in the watch-tower of his mind, while the fates were preparing to hurl him into the abyss. His only confidant in that Paris, humming with all the appetites and all the intrigues, was his typewriter. In his public appearances, he seemed lonely; and Mr. Lansing has revealed to us in two volumes how solitary his chief also was when the curtain of privacy was rung down. Dr. Wilson, in Bolingbroke’s phrase, thought himself to be the savior of society, but modern society does not require saviors. Mankind nowadays gives certain leaders certain tasks to do, and when those tasks are done, they are thrown out as mercilessly and unceremoniously as the bees throw out the drones.

Thus M. Clemenceau met with the same fate as Dr. Wilson. In the opinion of many shrewd observers, if there was one man entitled to say that he won the war, it was M. Clemenceau. The British people made up their minds to beat Germany as soon as the first British soldier was killed, and they never wavered in that determination. In my personal judgment, it was not Mr. Lloyd George who inspired the British people: it was the British people who inspired Mr. Lloyd George. But owing to the severity of the continuous onslaught on the French people, there was a time when France wavered. It was M. Clemenceau who rallied a nation in the throes of despair and infused into it a fresh determination to hold out to the end. The phrase ‘Le père la Victoire’ symbolized the feeling of France for M. Clemenceau. Moreover, when the war was over, M. Clemenceau succeeded in giving France a French peace — a peace which appealed to average Frenchmen: the restoration of Alsace-Lorraine, the Sarre coal, the French watch on the Rhine, the creation of another bulwark against Germany in the resurrection of Poland, infinite reparations, and the promise of further amputations of Germany in Upper Silesia and Schleswig. But the French people threw M. Clemenceau aside as swiftly as the American people threw Dr. Wilson aside. M. Clemenceau had done his work and there was no further need for him. Moreover, it was whispered that the French statesman, in his candidature for the Presidency, hoped to give to that office, with its strict limitations, some of the authority and executive powers which reside in the White House. And so the ‘Tiger’ lost the Élysée.

Hard, too, was the fate of that other great figure of the Peace Conference, M. Venizelos. Across the conference table at San Remo he tossed an empire to his country, and Greece expressed her gratitude by throwing him out of office at a time, be it remembered, when there was not the slightest suspicion in Athens that that empire could not be held. ‘ Put not thy faith in princes,’ groaned Strafford. ‘Put not thy faith in peoples,’ might well reply the fallen angels of the Paris Peace Paradise.

Nor do the examples of Russia with its Lenin, or of Italy with its Signor Mussolini, affect this argument; for Russia is a land of sick men lacking vitality and decision; and the greater the powers given to Signor Mussolini, the more jealously watched will he be by a country which, like all new states, is exceedingly jealous of its liberties. In his foreign policy, Signor Mussolini has signally failed to increase, as he promised, the prestige of his country and already within his own party can be heard the murmurs of a coming storm.

All around us in this modern world we see a curbing, a diminution, of personality and of that royal sway associated with it in the past. The modern mind is skeptical, suspicious, reserved, and ruthless; the herd does not follow its leaders as it used to do. There is neither an Irving on the stage, nor a Gladstone in the council chamber. We seek from our leaders, not leading, but coöperation. Dr. Wilson, in English opinion at any rate, fell because he refused to coöperate with other Americans, because he ignored the Republicans and even turned aside from his own peace delegation in Paris. The same charge, it is interesting to note, has been brought against Lord Kitchener. Both in his life and in his death there was something legendary in this proud, silent soldier; and if there was ever a man destined for hero-worship it was ‘K.’ But, as a plain matter of fact, there is no hero-worship, and in an admirable appreciation of Lord Kitchener, written shortly after his death by one of his friends at the War Office, the lack of this coöperative spirit, and his tendency to act and think alone, were noted and condemned.

We fear, we distrust personality beyond a certain limit. Why should this be so? An answer has been suggested in the machine-made character of our civilization. We are Robots, suggests M. Capek, the Czech dramatist, creatures who in our passion for efficiency have killed love and the soul. But is not the tyranny of the machine somewhat exaggerated? Do we really feel ourselves to be the slaves of the machine we employ? Is the motorist conscious that he is at the mercy of his car? Does even the factory-hand feel that, apart from his clamorous and monotonous machine, he is nothing? Have we not all the feeling that we have control over all mechanical inventions, and that the more powerful they are, the greater thereby is the tribute to the mind that conceived and the hand that directs their ‘fearful symmetry’? On the whole, is not the average man, on watching a modern leviathan take to the deep, going through a large factory, or reading of the wonders of Pittsburg and Manchester, conscious of a sense, not of impotence but of power?

A truer explanation, I venture to think, is to be found in the war. For the war found us out. When we throw our minds back on those mournful campaigns and, above all, when we read the justifications, apologies, and attacks made in print by the men who conducted them or by their friends, — French versus Kitchener, Gallieni versus Joffre, the Jellicoe school versus the Beatty school, Von Kluck against Von Moltke, Falkenhayn against Luclendorff, — we are inclined to accept, the gibe of Bernard Shaw, that the successful general is the one who makes the fewest mistakes. The people we honor and remember to-day are not the generals, but the soldiers. This is the age of ‘the Unknown Warrior.’ Thackeray in Vanity Fair complained how great was the notice of the generals, how complete was the indifference toward the humble soldiers who fought at Waterloo. If Thackeray were to return to England to-day, he would find in every town and village memorials raised to all the humble, obscure men who fought in the war, their names and rank inscribed in enduring stone.

Moreover, the blunders of the war have been more than equaled by the blunders of the peace. Where is that victory which the joy-bells so gleefully proclaimed? Where are its fruits? Is the world only a desert, and is there no hope beneath the ashes? The generals stumbled and, lo and behold, so have the statesmen. Man after all is limited alike in his intelligence and in his capacity. Amid the forces let loose by the war and the evidences of the havoc they caused, man has to a great extent lost faith in himself. He is somehow or other conscious of failure, and the sad truth has penetrated even the defenses of his vanity. We feel like children who have broken a toy and cannot put it to rights again. The reaction against the high-blown hopes of the nineteenth century in man is in full blast. All around us is wreckage, and men who have lived in the East, where they reckon time not in minutes but in centuries, are already telling us that civilization itself is crumbling, and that what we are now witnessing are the first stages in the decline and fall of the political structures built up by Western thought.

And the consciousness of semihelplessness on the part of the herd naturally affects its leaders. An extraordinarily interesting debate on the possibilities of Socialism was held a short time ago in the House of Commons, and the most crushing answer given to Mr. Snowden, its chief protagonist, came from that leader of industry, Sir Alfred Mond, who pointed out that the capacity of man to run a huge business was strictly limited. ‘I have come deliberately to the conclusion,’ he said, ‘that it is quite impossible for human beings to control any industry beyond a certain magnitude; and I say that after very careful study. The very curious fact was told me by an American friend that when, under Mr. Roosevelt’s administration, one of the American trusts dissolved, the component parts of that trust made more money in competition with each other than when united, simply because it had outgrown proper economic management, and got so large that the company had got like a Government Department, so complicated and so full of red tape that paralysis set in.’ The sense of limitation, the boundaries placed against the full exercise of man’s will, crop up everywhere. Not being very sure of ourselves, we cannot be sure of others. We can destroy, but oh, it is so hard to rebuild.

A second reason, I think, is to be found in the virtual collapse of that theological creed which centred round the Fall of Man. There is something extraordinarily uplifting in the thought that man, once the equal of the angels, had the courage and the will to fall down to his present level. People who boast a noble ancestry are always proud, and the thought of his past glories and the implicit promise and hope that he might once again reënter the promised land lifted up the hopes of man and filled them with buoyant expectations of a great heritage restored.

How comforting and exalting is such a belief, despite its regrets and its remorse, compared with the idea gradually soaking into the popular mind, that man, far from being once the equal of the angels, has developed painfully and slowly from the sea worm which one fine day was daring enough to leave the ocean for the land; that we are linked by endless chains to the animal world around us; and that, if there is such a thing as progress, it is a process so slow that mortal man is incapable of measuring its evolution. How can we be hero-worshipers when we think of the sea worm? How can we surround our great personalities with the incense of our idolatry when we know that they are made of such unsatisfactory stuff as we ourselves? How can we worship a god with feet of clay?

A London reviewer the other day described Carlyle and his hero-worship as ‘silly’ and ‘underbred.’ Carlyle with his superlatives has gone, and in his place has come Mr. Lytton Strachey who, with subtle under-statement, with delicate irony, with the pretense of good-nature, is laying bare, to our intense amusement and delight, the idols of yesterday. In those haunting pages where a scholar’s care mingles with a satirist’s fancy, we see Queen Victoria and General Gordon and Florence Nightingale and Cardinal Manning and Dr. Arnold in a light which never penetrated the secure and tender darkness that protected our fathers.