theologians come, with a doctrinal hammer and many nails, the
lineal descendants of the nail that Jael drove into the head of Sisera
because he fought against the Israelites. They have found out that there
is a want of sound sectarian teaching in the works of the poet, and they
say that in the interests of theology they must drive a nail in. They
drive it: they know how to drive nails, some of the theologians. Good
sound crushing, rending, comfortable nails of doctrine--none of your
airy latitudinarian tin-tacks. Then come the critics: they have been
brought up to it. They have all manner of nails--nails with broad heads,
and narrow heads, and brass heads, and no heads, but all with points.
If a critic ever should drive in a nail without a point he would feel
everlastingly disgraced, but he never does: he sharpens them on the
premises. He can always find a place for another nail, till by-and-by
the coffin is quite covered, and then the great man is thankful to rest
in it. Then the British public sings more psalms.

But it seems to afford them solid comfort and happiness to find out, or
to think they find out, that a great man was really not so great after
all, and that they can look down on him. It is certainly a more piquant
sensation to look down on a great man than on an ordinary mortal, and
makes one feel happier. There is a melancholy, sweet satisfaction--I
have noticed it myself--in pointing out exactly where this or that great
man erred, and where we should not have erred if we had been this
or that great man. There is a calm, blessed sense of the law of
compensation among humans when they murmur over the grave: "Ah! his was
a mighty soul; everybody says so; but his umbrella was only gingham, and
mine has a silver handle." Or, "Yes, his force of mind was gigantic; but
just here he left the beaten track. If I had been in his place at that
moment I should have kept it; I always do." Or, "His morality looks
elegant, but it hasn't got any fibre to it. Now my morality is all
fibre; you never met with such fibrous morality. What did he do with the
fibre out of his? Did he pawn it? did he sell it? did he give it away?
We should like to know all about it--is it in his autobiography? Did he
write an autobiography? If he didn't, why didn't he? We prefer all our
great men to write autobiographies. We like to be well up in them,
and we think it would throw a great deal of light on the study of
psychology, and gratify our sen