Softly, Bucephalus! A little gentle ambling through these social
complications might sometimes be well.
Again, while he has the utmost of moral stability and constancy, and
also great firmness of intellectual adhesion to main principles, there
is in him a certain minor changefulness. He pours out a powerful light,
but it flickers. Momentary partialities sway him,--to be balanced,
indeed, by subsequent partialities, for his broad nature will not be
permanently one-sided; but meantime his authority suffers. Mood,
occasion, the latest event, govern overmuch the color of his statement;
so that an unsympathetic auditor--and every partiality, by the law of
the world, must push _some one_ out of the ring of sympathy--may
honestly deem him unfair, even wilfully unfair.
Finally, he relies too much upon sarcasm and personal invective as
agents. He has a theory on this matter; and we feel _sure_ that it is
erroneous. Not that invective is to be forbidden. Not that personal
criticism is always out of place, or always useless. We are among the
"all men" whom Thoreau declared to be "enamored of the beauty of plain
speech." We ask no man in public or private life to wear a satin glove
upon his tongue.
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