Allibone’s Dictionary of Authors. Philadelphia:  Childs & Peterson, 1858.  Vol.  I. pp. 1005.

Leigh Hunt, in one of his Essays, speaks of the wishful thrill with which, in looking over an index, he wondered if ever his name would appear under the letter H in the reversed order (Hunt, Leigh) peculiar to that useful and too much neglected field of literary achievement.  In Mr. Allibone’s Dictionary he would see his wish more than satisfied; for if he turn up “Hunt, Leigh,” he will find a reference to “Hunt, James Henry Leigh,” and under that head a list of his works, more complete, perhaps, than he himself could easily have drawn up.

In glancing along the leaves of a collection like this, one’s heart is touched with something of the same vague pathos that dims the eye in a graveyard.  What a necrology of notability!  How many a controversialist who made a great stir in his day, how many a once rising genius, how many a withering satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the tombstone immortality of a name and date!  Think of the aspirations, the dreams, the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of himself and wife) in an impartial and generous posterity;—­and then read “Smith J.(ohn?) 1713-1784(?).  The Vision of Immortality, an Epic Poem in Twelve Books, 1740, 4to. See Lowndes.” The time of his own death less certain than that of his poem, which we may fix pretty safely in 1740,—­and the only posterity that took any interest in him the indefatigable Lowndes!  Well, even a bibliographic indemnity for contemporary neglect, to have so much as your title-page read after it is a century old, and to enjoy a posthumous public of one, is better than nothing.

A volume like Mr. Allibone’s—­so largely a hospital for incurable forgottenhoods—­is better than any course of philosophy to the young author.  Let him reckon how many of the ten thousand or so names here recorded he has ever heard of before, let him make this myriad the denominator of a fraction to which the dozen perennial fames shall be the numerator, and he will find that his dividend of a chance at escaping speedy extinction is not worth making himself unhappy about.  Should some statistician make such a book the basis for constructing the tables of a fame-insurance company, the rates at which alone policies could be safely issued would put them beyond the reach of all except those who did not need them.  After all, perhaps, the next best thing to being famous or infamous is to be utterly forgotten; for that, at least, is to accomplish a decisive result by living.  To hang on the perilous edge of immortality by the nails, liable at any moment to drop into the waters of Oblivion, is at best a questionable beatitude.

But if a dictionary of this kind give rise to some melancholy reflections, it is not without suggestions of a more soothing character.  We are reminded by it of the tender-heartedness of Chaucer, who, in the “House of Fame,” after speaking of Orpheus and Arion, (Mr. Tyrwhitt calls him Orion,) and Cheiron and Glasgerion, has a kind word for the lesser minstrels that play on pipes made of straw,—­