Singularity may be as shallow as the shallowest conformity. There are
numbers of such from whom if you deduct the eccentricity, it is like
subtracting red from vermilion or six from half a dozen. They are
grimaces of humanity,--no more. In particular, I make occasion to say,
that those oddities, whose chief characteristic it is to slink away from
the habitations of men, and claim companionship with musk-rats, are,
despite Mr. Thoreau's pleasant patronage of them, no whit more manly or
profound than the average citizen, who loves streets and parlors, and
does not endure estrangement from the Post-Office. Mice lurk in holes
and corners; could the cat speak, she would say that they have a genius
_only_ for lurking in holes. Bees and ants are, to say the least, quite
as witty as beetles, proverbially blind; yet they build insect cities,
and are as invincibly social and city-loving as Socrates himself.

Aside, however, from special eccentricity, there are men, like the Earl
of Essex, Bacon's _soi-disant_ friend, who possess a certain emphatic
and imposing individuality, which, while commonly assumed to indicate
character and force, is really but the _succedaneum_ for these. They
are like oysters, with extreme stress of shell, and only a blind, soft,
acephalous body within. These are commonly great men so long as little
men will serve; and are something less than little ever after. As an
instance of this, I should select the late chief magistrate of this
nation. His whole ability lay in putting a most imposing countenance
upon commonplaces. He made a mere _air_ seem solid as rock. Owing to
this possibility of presenting all force on the outside, and so creating
a false impression of resource, all great social emergencies are
followed by a speedy breaking down of men to whom was generally
attributed an able spirit; while others of less outward mark, and for
this reason hitherto unnoticed, come forward, and prove to be indeed the
large vessels of manhood accorded to that generation.