There is a great pathos in the fact that the greatest man of these last fifty years, the man of blood and iron, should, as soon as he lies in his coffin, be insulted by such a book as this. The hand in its steel gauntlet, which welded fragments into a nation, is powerless to defend its owner against betrayal and false witness. The vulgar, insatiable curiosity of the general world breeds such traitors as these makers of post-mortem recollections; breeds them, nourishes them, recompenses them. There would be no supply if there were no demand. The general world has a greedy appetite for diseased food; as with its jaws it devours putrid game, decayed oysters, and the swollen livers of tortured geese, so it loves to devour with its frothy brain all that belittles, ridicules, dishonours, or betrays the few amongst it--the very few!--who are above it in mind, in will, in force, in fame. 'Come, come!' they cry to the great man's servants when the great man lies dead; 'tell us, you who saw him in his hours of abandonment, tell us of all that can drag him down nearer to our level! Tell us of his varicocele, tell us of his dyspepsia, tell us of his caprices, tell us of his humours, tell us of his tears when his poisoned dog lay dying--you saw them through the keyhole--tell us of his hasty words, his pettish foibles, his human mortal waywardness--you know so much about them, you who waited behind his chair and filled his tobacco-pouch--come, come, comfort us; his great shadow seems still to lie upon the earth and make us small and crawling insects crushed by his spurred boot--come, come, comfort us! Tell us, show us, make us happy belittling him; let us, the envious, the puny, the mean, rejoice, for you who cleaned his boot and held his bare foot in your hired hand, can tell us that he, the maker of emperors and of nations, he, the Mighty, had Achilles' heel!' For there is an unwritten law, not of literature but of life, which decrees that the jealousy of the small soul for the great soul shall be cruel and deathless as Fate.[10] [Footnote 10: Since this was written, the letters of Ruskin and Rossetti have been published: a greater offence against dead men could not be committed.] IX AUBERON HERBERT