His elevation above the common run of men was conspicuous in his treatment of the money which came to him in connexion with his successful lecturing tour in America (1872-1873).
Macaulay's prediction that the interest in the man would supersede that in his "Works" seemed and seems likely enough to justify itself; but his theory that the man alone mattered and that a portrait painted by the hand of an inspired idiot was a true measure of the man has not worn better than the common run of literary propositions.
It shows in its author a want of reverence, a want of decency in the proper sense, a too great readiness to condescend to the easiest kind of ludicrous ideas and the kind most acceptable at that time to the common run of mankind.
