The man of letters is studious of the personal and individual elements in literature because he perceives that the social government exists from man to man; and that he who would govern his neighbour must govern him by the stress of spirit upon spirit. It is those men, he sees, that edge the common ideas and feelings of the masses with flame from an enkindled personality who become the chief agents of the social will. "The public," declared Isaac Disraeli, father of the prime minister, "is the creation of the master writers—an axiom as demonstrable as any in Euclid, and a principle as sure in its operations as any in mechanics." The master writers may not in any particular crisis determine the national action taken by the officials in charge of the political government. What they do determine is the national character, which, in the long run, is a far more important object to determine than any particular so-called national act.
In times of critical national action, practical politicians habitually make light of Utopian idealists, doctrinaires, theorists, mere literary men. Any one who occupies himself with the expression of social emotions and sentiments which they regard as inconvenient, they incline to dismiss to limbo as an empty rhetorician.
