human perfection than any one whom he had ever seen.  And yet the picture of Hallam at Eton represents a young man of an apparently solid and commonplace type, with a fresh colour, and almost wholly destitute of distinction or charm; while his extant fragments of prose and poetry are heavy, verbose, and elaborate, and without any memorable quality.  It appears indeed as if he had exercised a sort of hypnotic influence upon his contemporaries.  Neither does he seem to have produced a very gracious impression upon outsiders who happened to meet him.  There is a curious anecdote told by some one who met Arthur Hallam travelling with his father on the Continent only a short time before his sudden death.  The narrator says that he saw with a certain satisfaction how mercilessly the young man criticised and exposed his father’s statements, remembering how merciless the father had often been in dealing summarily with the arguments and statements of his own contemporaries.  One asks oneself in vain what the magnetic charm of his presence and temperament can have been.  It was undoubtedly there, and yet it seems wholly irrecoverable.  The same is true, in a different region, with the late Mr. W. E. Henley.  His literary performances, with the exception of some half-a-dozen poetical pieces, have no great permanent value.  His criticisms were vehement and complacent, but represent no great delicacy of analysis nor breadth of view.  His treatment of Stevenson, considering the circumstances of the case, was ungenerous and irritable.  Yet those who were brought into close contact with Henley recognised something magnanimous, noble, and fiery about him, which evoked a passionate devotion.  I remember shortly before his death reading an appreciation of his work by a faithful admirer, who described him as “another Dr. Johnson,” and speaking of his critical judgment, said, “Mr. Henley is pontifical in his wrath; it pleased him, for example, to deny to De Quincey the title to write English prose.”  That a criticism so arrogant, so saugrenu, should be re-echoed with such devoted commendation is a proof that the writer’s independent judgment was simply swept away by Henley’s personality; and in both these cases one is merely brought face to face with the fact that though men can earn the admiration of the world by effective performance, the most spontaneous and enduring gratitude is given to individuality.

The other way of greatness is the way of intensity, that focuses all its impact at some brilliant point, like a rapier-thrust or a flash of lightning.  Men with this kind of greatness have generally some supreme and dazzling accomplishment, and the rest of their nature is often sacrificed to one radiant faculty.  Their power, in some one single direction, is absolutely distinct and unquestioned; and these are the men who, if they can gather up and express the forces of some vague and widespread tendency, some blind and instinctive movement of men’s minds, form as it were the