Go and hear a
really great preacher, when he is preaching in his own church upon a
common Sunday, and possibly you may hear a very ordinary sermon. I have
heard Mr. Melvill preach very poorly. You must not expect to find people
always at their best. It is a very unusual thing that even the ablest
men should be like Burke, who could not talk with an intelligent
stranger for five minutes without convincing the stranger that he had
talked for five minutes with a great man. And it is an awful thing, when
some clever youth is introduced to some local poet who has been told how
greatly the clever youth admires him, and what vast expectations
the clever youth has formed of his conversation, and when the local
celebrity makes a desperate effort to talk up to the expectations formed
of him. I have witnessed such a scene; and I can sincerely say that I
could not previously have believed that the local celebrity could have
made such a fool of himself. He was resolved to show that he deserved
his fame, and to show that the mind which had produced those lovely
verses in the country newspaper could not stoop to commonplace things.
* * * * *
Undue sensitiveness, and a too lowly estimate of their own powers, hang
heavily upon some men,--probably upon more men than one would imagine.
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