angels of genius are the masters by proxy, the bad
angels of genius exert an influence as negative and destructive as the
influence of the others is positive and constructive.

How jolly it will be, for all but the bad angels, when we can assign
to them such failures as Browning's "The Inn Album"; Davy's contention
that iodine was not an element, and Luther's savage hounding of the
nobles upon the wretched peasants who had risen in revolt under his
own inspiration. But enough of the bad angels! Let us inter them with
this epitaph: "They did their worst; devils could do no more."

Turn we to the bright side of the situation. How delighted Keats will
be when at last the world develops a little sense of proportion, and
after first neglecting and then over-praising him, finally proposes to
give poor old Severn his due as a master by proxy. Imagine Sir William
Herschel's pleasure when his beloved sister Caroline begins to
receive her full deserts. And Tschaikowsky will slough his morbidness
and improvise a Slavic Hallelujah Chorus when his unseen patroness
comes into her own. It is true that the world has already given her
memory two fingers and a perfunctory "thank ye." This was for putting
her purse at Tschaikowsky's disposal, thus making it possible for him
to write a few immortal compositions instead of teaching mortals the
piano in a maddening conservatory. But now, glory! hallelujah! the
world is soon going to render her honor long overdue for the spiritual
support which so ably reinforced the financial.

And Sir Thomas More, that early socialist--imagine his elation! For he
will regard our desire to transfer some of his own credit to the man
in the pre-Elizabethan street as a sure sign that we are steadily
approaching the golden gates of his Utopia. For good Sir Thomas knows
that our view of heroes and hero-worship has always been too little
democratic. We have been over-inclined, with the aristocratic
Carlyle, to see all history as a procession of a few transcendent
masters surrounded, preceded, and followed by enormous herds of abject
and quite insignificant slaves. Between these slaves and the masters,
there is, in the old view, about as much similarity as exists in the
child's imagination between the overwhelming dose of castor oil and
the single pluperfect chocolate drop whereby the dose is supposed to
be made endurable. Already the idea is beginning to glimmer that
heroic stuff is far more evenly distributed t