It was not so much a superiority in the
men of other ages to the Victorian men. It was a superiority of
Victorian men to themselves. The individual was unequal. Perhaps that is
why the society became unequal: I cannot say. They were lame giants; the
strongest of them walked on one leg a little shorter than the other. A
great man in any age must be a common man, and also an uncommon man.
Those that are only uncommon men are perverts and sowers of pestilence.
But somehow the great Victorian man was more and less than this. He was
at once a giant and a dwarf. When he has been sweeping the sky in
circles infinitely great, he suddenly shrivels into something
indescribably small. There is a moment when Carlyle turns suddenly from
a high creative mystic to a common Calvinist. There are moments when
George Eliot turns from a prophetess into a governess. There are also
moments when Ruskin turns into a governess, without even the excuse of
sex. But in all these cases the alteration comes as a thing quite abrupt
and unreasonable. We do not feel this acute angle anywhere in Homer or
in Virgil or in Chaucer or in Shakespeare or in Dryden; such things as
they knew they knew.
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