a great hero, scholar, genius, philosopher, writer etc.

She had imagined him solely capable of terrific deeds — even in revenge — deeds whose sheer superhumanness would make them partake of a certain nobility.

He then amused himself with the fiddle—tried the French horn for a season, varying the matter by a few lessons upon the clarionet and hautboy, and finally improving his powers of endurance by a little practising of the Kent bugle. He at length became a perfect melomaniac, and was always in danger of being indicted as a nuisance by his less scientific neighbours, whose ears were doomed to suffer both by night and by day.

With his hand on the instrument, the bell shrilled loudly. “Now, what?” growled Sir Julius.