' You see,
the autobiographists are usually people with an innate twist towards
writing, people whose heroes, therefore, were men of letters; and thus
(especially as I myself have that twist) I am apt to think of literary
hero-worship as flourishing more than could any other kind. I must try
to be less narrow. At first sight of the Lord Chancellor, doubtless,
unforgettable emotions rise in the breast of a young man who has felt
from his earliest years the passionate desire to be a lawyer. One
whose dream it is to excel in trade will have been profoundly stirred
at finding himself face to face with Sir Thomas Lipton. At least, I
suppose so. I speak without conviction. I am inclined, after all, to
think that there is in the literary temperament a special sensibility,
whereby these great first envisagements mean more to it than to
natures of a more practical kind. So it is primarily to men very
eminent in literature that I venture to offer a hint for making those
envisagements as great as possible.
The hint will serve only in certain cases. There are various ways in
which a young man may chance to see his hero for the first time. `One
wintry afternoon, not long after I came to London,' the
autobiographist will tell you, `I happened to be in Cheyne Walk, bent
on I know not what errand, when I saw coming slowly along the pavement
an old grey-bearded man.
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