Certainly, he reveals no secrets that are not open secrets about his heroes. He is continually asking “What is his secret?” and the answer is usually a little disappointing, a little exiguous in surprise, when it comes. Thus he tells us that the secret of Burns “lies in two words--inspiration and sympathy.” That is true, but it leaves Burns smooth as a statue. Burns appeals to us surely, not only through his inspiration and sympathy, but as the spirit of man fluttering rebelliously, songfully, satirically, against the bars of orthodoxy. Scotsmen revere him as the champion of human nature against the Levites. His errors, no doubt, were as gross as those of the Levites, but human nature turns affectionately to those who protest on its behalf against tyranny, and Burns with all his sins, was a liberator. When he comes to Burke, Lord Rosebery again asks, “What is his secret?” “The secret of Burke’s character,” he says, “is this, in my judgment--that he loved reform and hated revolution.” This, again, leaves Burke with the eyes of a statue. We shall understand the secret of Burke much better if we see him as a man who had far more passionate convictions about the duties than about the rights of human beings. He believed in good government and in good citizenship, but he was never even touched by the Utopian dream of the perfectibility of man. Lord Rosebery, indeed, brings the figures of the dead to life, not in his interpretation of their secrets, but usually in some anecdote that reminds us of their profound humanity.