“With fame in just proportion envy grows;
The man that makes a character makes foes.”
The selfishness—not to say the innate depravity—of human nature, as transmitted by historic inheritance, is such that every one who has not been regenerated by the reception or culture of a better spirit secretly craves a monopoly of the goods which command his desires. He dislikes his competitors, and would gladly defeat their designs and appropriate every waiting laurel to himself. In 1865 Forrest wrote, in a letter to Oakes, “Yes, my dear friend, there are many in this world who take pleasure in the misfortunes of their fellow-men and gloat over the miseries of their neighbors. And their envy, hatred, and malice are always manifested most towards men of positive natures.”
Souls of a generous type leave this base temper behind, and rejoice in the glory of a rival as if it were their own. But mean souls, so far from taking a disinterested delight in the spectacle of triumphant genius or valor justly crowned with what it has justly won, are filled with pain at the sight, a pain obscenely mixed up with fear and hate. Wherever they see an illustrious head they would fain strike it down or spatter it with mud. Their perverse instincts regard every good of another as so much kept from them. There was a powerful passage in the play of Jack Cade which Forrest used to pronounce with tremendous effect, ingravidating every word with his own bitter experience of its truth:
“Life’s story still! all would o’ertop their fellows;
And every rank, the lowest, hath its height,
To which hearts flutter with as large a hope
As princes feel for empire! but in each
Ambition struggles with a sea of hate.
He who sweats up the ridgy grades of life