Often, indeed, by virtue of a greater sensitiveness and a keener perception, they have been profoundly affected by unpopularity and the sense of being misunderstood.  Carlyle, Tennyson, Ruskin, for instance, were men of almost morbid sensibility, and lived in sadness; and, on the other hand, there are few great men who have not been affected for the worse by premature success.  The best soil for greatness to grow up in would seem to be an early isolation, sustained against the disregard of the world by the affection and admiration of a few kindred minds.  Then when the great man has learned his method and his message, and learned too not to over-value the popular verdict, success may mature and mellow his powers.  Yet of how many great men can this be said?  As a rule, indeed, a great man’s best work has been done in solitude and disfavour, and he has attained his sunshine when he can no longer do his best work.

The question is whether the modern conditions of life are unfavourable to greatness; and I think that it must be confessed that they are.  In the first place, we all know so much too about each other, and there is so eager a personal curiosity abroad, a curiosity about the smallest details of the life of any one who seems to have any power of performance, that it encourages men to over-confidence, egotism, and mannerism.  Again, the world is so much in love with novelty and sensation of all kinds, that facile successes are easily made and as easily obliterated.  What so many people admire is not greatness, but the realisation of greatness and its tangible rewards.  The result of this is that men who show any faculty for impressing the world are exploited and caressed, are played with as a toy, and as a toy neglected.  And then, too, the age is deeply permeated by social ambitions.  Men love to be labelled, ticketed, decorated, differentiated from the crowd.  Newspapers pander to this taste; and then the ease and rapidity of movement tempt men to a restless variety of experience, of travel, of society, of change, which is alien to the settled and sober temper in which great designs are matured.  There is a story, not uncharacteristic, of modern social life, of a hostess who loved to assemble about her, in the style of Mrs. Leo Hunter, notabilities small and great, who was reduced to presenting a young man who made his appearance at one of her gatherings as “Mr. ——­, whose uncle, you will remember, was so terribly mangled in the railway accident at S——.”  It is this feverish desire to be distinguished at any price which has its counterpart in the feverish desire to find objects of admiration.  Not so can solid greatness be achieved.