Burke is an example of a man who appears to have had all the attributes of a great speaker except tact, and was conspicuously contrasted in this respect with Fox, whose genial nature never failed to keep touch with the situation. A man whose rising makes people think of going to dinner is not distinctively a great orator, even though his speeches are an immortal contribution to literature. The well-known anecdote of the dagger illustrates the unhappy results of losing touch with the situation. In the midst of one of his great discourses on the French Revolution, intending to impress upon his hearers the bloody character of that movement, Burke drew from his bosom a dagger and cast it on the floor. It so happened, however, that the Members of Parliament present were not just then in the mood to be duly impressed by this exhibition, which produced only astonishment and ridicule. Fox could never have done a thing of this sort. With all Burke’s greatness, it would seem that there must have been something narrow, strenuous, and at times even repellent, in his personality and manner, some lack of ready fellow-feeling, allowing him to lose that sense of the situation without which there can hardly be any face-to-face ascendency. The ascendency which an author exercises over us by means of the written page is the same in essence as that of the man of action or the orator. The medium of communication is different; visible or audible traits give place to subtler indications. There is also more time for reflection, and reader or writer can choose the mood most fit to exert power or to feel it; so that there is no need for that constant preparedness and aggressiveness of voice and manner which the man of action requires. But these are, after all, incidental differences; and the underlying traits of personality, the essential relationship between leader and follower, are much the same as in the other cases. The reader should feel that the author’s mind and purpose are congenial with his own, though in the present direction they go farther, that the thought communicated is not at all alien, but so truly his that it offers an opportunity to expand to a wider circle, and become a completer edition of himself. In short, if an author is to establish and maintain the power to interest us and, in his province, to lead our thought, he must exhibit personal significance and tact, in a form appropriate to this mode of expression. He must have a humanity so broad that, in certain of our moods at least, it gives a sense of congeniality and at-homeness. He must also make a novel and characteristic impression of some sort, a fresh and authentic contribution to our life; and must, moreover, be wholly himself, “stand united with his thought,” have that “truth to its type of the given force” of which Walter Pater speaks. He must possess belief in something, and simplicity and boldness in expressing it.