If the perishable son of time has produced an imperishable work, how short his own life seems compared with that of his child!  He is like Semela or Maia—­a mortal mother who gave birth to an immortal son; or, contrarily, he is like Achilles in regard to Thetis.  What a contrast there is between what is fleeting and what is permanent!  The short span of a man’s life, his necessitous, afflicted, unstable existence, will seldom allow of his seeing even the beginning of his immortal child’s brilliant career; nor will the father himself be taken for that which he really is.  It may be said, indeed, that a man whose fame comes after him is the reverse of a nobleman, who is preceded by it.

However, the only difference that it ultimately makes to a man to receive his fame at the hands of contemporaries rather than from posterity is that, in the former case, his admirers are separated from him by space, and in the latter by time.  For even in the case of contemporary fame, a man does not, as a rule, see his admirers actually before him.  Reverence cannot endure close proximity; it almost always dwells at some distance from its object; and in the presence of the person revered it melts like butter in the sun.  Accordingly, if a man is celebrated with his contemporaries, nine-tenths of those amongst whom he lives will let their esteem be guided by his rank and fortune; and the remaining tenth may perhaps have a dull consciousness of his high qualities, because they have heard about him from remote quarters.  There is a fine Latin letter of Petrarch’s on this incompatibility between reverence and the presence of the person, and between fame and life.  It comes second in his Epistolae familiares?[1] and it is addressed to Thomas Messanensis.  He there observes, amongst other things, that the learned men of his age all made it a rule to think little of a man’s writings if they had even once seen him.

[Footnote 1:  In the Venetian edition of 1492.]

Since distance, then, is essential if a famous man is to be recognized and revered, it does not matter whether it is distance of space or of time.  It is true that he may sometimes hear of his fame in the one case, but never in the other; but still, genuine and great merit may make up for this by confidently anticipating its posthumous fame.  Nay, he who produces some really great thought is conscious of his connection with coming generations at the very moment he conceives it; so that he feels the extension of his existence through centuries and thus lives with posterity as well as for it.  And when, after enjoying a great man’s work, we are seized with admiration for him, and wish him back, so that we might see and speak with him, and have him in our possession, this desire of ours is not unrequited; for he, too, has had his longing for that posterity which will grant the recognition, honor, gratitude and love denied by envious contemporaries.