Mrs. Parnell's book on her husband, published in 1916, throws a clear light upon that chapter in Parnell's life. I see no reason to doubt its statements and conclusions; I see many reasons for accepting them. They confirm the impressions that many of us had thirty years ago, and relate facts that some of us more than surmised at that {257} time, and before it. It is scarcely possible for them to deal with the hypocrisy and jealousy, revengefulness and cant that broke a man's life and a nation's cause. These were not in Ireland alone. Britain and America had their share. Was Parnell a great man? I am inclined to think that he just missed greatness. If he had won, there would be no doubt, I suppose. That he was the man for his time there can be no denying. It is idle, I suppose, to speculate whether he would have been the man for the time after Home Rule had been gained, for then the duties would have been vastly different. And yet they would have called for qualities not common among Irishmen, among political Irishmen in Ireland, I mean,--the qualities that made him eminent and successful as a leader. He was not eloquent, but eloquence is not essential to greatness. He did not inspire affection, devotion. To this it may be answered that the people of his country loved him. So they did. But a great many politicians who were his followers did not. Some of them entertained for him emotions quite opposite to love. Of course he inspired respect; more than that, he instilled fear into the hearts of his parliamentary army. They feared him then. But if his aloofness, his detachment from the usual, even the unusual, affairs of society and human interest, was one of his most remarkable characteristics, it was in his favour rather than against him, it contributed to "the mystery" in which his personality was shrouded, a mystery cultivated less by himself than by legend. {258} An eminent politician whose life is isolated must be "mysterious" to the crowd. He did not care for the play, for music, for pictures, or for literature, excepting when literature bore upon the work in hand. He did not care for society, for sport, for games of any kind. And so he was a mystery to more countries than one. He was easily bored; the ordinary life of politics bored him, his followers bored him; it often bored him to make a speech. His power was in his set purpose, his concentration upon it, his absolute disinterestedness. Save in one instance, he ground no axe and was not the cause of axe-grinding by others.