A Great Man

He was the one great man of the old world whom I have met who was not a mere statue over his own grave. He was deaf and he talked like a torrent. He did not talk about the books he had written; he was far too much alive for that. He talked about the books he had not written. He unrolled a purple bundle of romances which he had never had time to tell. He asked me to write one of the stories for him, as he would have asked the milkman, if he had been talking to the milkman.

—G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles, A Great Man, writing of George Meredith.