Montesinos.—­In such honest anglers, Sir Thomas, I should look for as many virtues, as good old happy Izaak Walton found in his brethren of the rod and line.  Nor will you, I think, disparage them; for you were of the Rhymers’ Company, and at a time when things appear to us in their true colours and proportion (if ever while we are yet in the body), you remembered your verses with more satisfaction than your controversial writings, even though you had no misgivings concerning the part which you had chosen.

Sir Thomas More.—­My verses, friend, had none of the athanasia in their composition.  Though they have not yet perished, they cannot be said to have a living existence; even you, I suspect, have sought for them rather because of our personal acquaintance than for any other motive.  Had I been only a poet, those poems, such as they were, would have preserved my name; but being remembered for other grounds, better and worse, the name which I have left has been one cause why they have passed into oblivion, sooner than their perishable nature would have carried them thither.  If in the latter part of my mortal existence I had misgivings concerning any of my writings, they were of the single one, which is still a living work, and which will continue so to be.  I feared that speculative opinions, which had been intended for the possible but remote benefit of mankind, might, by unhappy circumstances, be rendered instrumental to great and immediate evil; an apprehension, however, which was altogether free from self-reproach.

But my verses will continue to exist in their mummy state, long after the worms shall have consumed many of those poetical reputations which are at this time in the cherry-cheeked bloom of health and youth.  Old poets will always retain their value for antiquaries and philologists, modern ones are far too numerous ever to acquire an accidental usefulness of this kind, even if the language were to undergo greater changes than any circumstances are likely to produce.  There will now be more poets in every generation than in that which preceded it; they will increase faster than your population; and as their number increases, so must the proportion of those who will be remembered necessarily diminish.  Tell the Fitz-Muses this!  It is a consideration, Sir Poet, which may serve as a refrigerant for their ardour.  Those of the tribe who may flourish hereafter (as the flourishing phrase is) in any particular age, will be little more remembered in the next than the Lord Mayors and Sheriffs who were their contemporaries.

Montesinos.—­Father in verse, if you had not put off flesh and blood so long, you would not imagine that this consideration will diminish their number.  I am sure it would not have affected me forty years ago, had I seen this truth then as clearly as I perceive and feel it now.  Though it were manifest to all men that not one poet in an age, in a century, a millennium, could establish his claim to be for ever known, every aspirant would persuade himself that he is the happy person for whom the inheritance of fame is reserved.  And when the dream of immortality is dispersed, motives enough remain for reasonable ambition.