erhaps, there was a slight shock. Great men are but life-sized. Most
of them, indeed, are rather short. No matter to hero-worshipping youth.
The shock did but swell the thrill. It did but enlarge the wonder that
this was the man himself, the man who--

I was about to say 'who had written those inspired books.' You see,
the autobiographists are usually people with an innate twist towards
writing, people whose heroes, therefore, were men of letters; and thus
(especially as I myself have that twist) I am apt to think of literary
hero-worship as flourishing more than could any other kind. I must try
to be less narrow. At first sight of the Lord Chancellor, doubtless,
unforgettable emotions rise in the breast of a young man who has felt
from his earliest years the passionate desire to be a lawyer. One whose
dream it is to excel in trade will have been profoundly stirred at
finding himself face to face with Sir Thomas Lipton. At least, I suppose
so. I speak without conviction. I am inclined, after all, to think that
there is in the literary temperament a special sensibility, whereby
these great first envisagements mean more to it than to natures of
a more practical kind. So it is primarily to men very eminent in
literature that I venture to offer a hint for making those envisagements
as great as possible.

The hint will serve only in certain cases. There are various ways in
which a young man may chance to see his hero for the first time. 'One
wintry afternoon, not long after I came to London,' the autobiographist
will tell you, 'I happened to be in Cheyne Walk, bent on I know not what
errand, when I saw coming slowly along the pavement an old grey-bearded
man. He wore a hat of the kind that was called in those days a
"wide-awake," and he leaned heavily on a stick which he carried in his
right hand. I stood reverently aside to let him pass--the man who had
first taught me to see, to feel, to think. Yes, it was Thomas Carlyle;
and as he went by, looking neither to the right nor to the left,
my heart stood still within me. What struck me most in that
thought-furrowed face was the eyes. I had never, I have never since,
seen a pair of eyes which,' etc., etc. This is well enough, and I don't
say that the writer has exaggerated the force of the impression he
received. I say merely that the impression would have been stronger
still if he had seen Carlyle in a room. The open air is not really a
good setting for a hero. It is too diff