There are small artists and great artists.  Granted an equal portion of imagination and an equal command of verbal resources, and still there will be this difference.  It is an affair of more or less intellectual depth and more or less character.  If character were the only one of these two things to be considered in the case of Mr. Wilson’s writings, one might with little or no hesitation predict that the best of them would long remain classics.  They are full of character, of a high and fine character.  They have a tone peculiar to themselves, like a man’s voice, which is one of the most unmistakable properties of a man.  It would be no reflection on an author to say that his point of view in fundamental matters had changed in the course of thirty or forty years; but the truth is that with reference to his great political ideal Mr. Wilson’s point of view has not widely changed.  The scope of his survey has been enlarged, he has filled up the intervening space with a thousand observations, he sees his object with a more penetrating and commanding eye; but it is the same object that drew to itself his youthful gaze, and has had its part in making him

     “The generous spirit, who, when brought
      Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought
      Upon the plan that pleased his boyish thought.”

The world, in time, will judge of the amount of knowledge and the degree of purely intellectual force that Mr. Wilson has applied in his field of study.  A contemporary cannot well pronounce such a judgment, especially if the province be not his own.

In the small space at my disposal I shall try, first, to say what I think is the political conception or idea upon which Mr. Wilson has looked so steadily and with so deep emotion that he has made of it a poetical subject.  And then I shall venture to distinguish those processes of imagination, that artistic method, which we call style, by which he has elucidated its meaning for his readers so as to win for it their intelligent and moved regard.  The inquiry will take into account his earliest book, Congressional Government, published in 1885, Division and Reunion, 1893, An Old Master and Other Political Essays, 1893, Mere Literature and Other Essays, 1896, George Washington, 1897, The State, written 1889, rewritten 1898, A History of the American People, 1902, Constitutional Government in the United States, 1908, and a volume, issued very recently in England, containing some of the President’s statements on the war and entitled America and Freedom.