CHAPTER VIII.  LITERARY FAME.

Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually recording illustrious names.  But, as often as a new name is written there, an old one disappears.  Only a few stand in illuminated characters, never to be effaced.  These are the high nobility of Nature,—­Lords of the Public Domain of Thought.  Posterity shall never question their titles.  But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet opinion of unwise men, must soon be as well forgotten, as if they had never been.  To this great oblivion must most men come.  It is better, therefore, that they should soon make up their minds to this; well knowing, that, as their bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again, and their graves tell no tales of them; so musttheir names likewise be utterly forgotten, and their most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions have no longer an individual being among men; but be resolved and incorporated into the universe of thought.  If, then, the imagination can trace the noble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a beer-barrel, and know that

“Imperial Cesar, dead and turned to clay,

May stop a hole to keep the wind away;”

not less can it trace the noble thoughts of great men, till it finds them mouldered into the common dust of conversation, and used to stop men’s mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the flaws of opinion.  Such, for example, are all popular adages and wise proverbs, which are now resolved into the common mass of thought; their authors forgotten, and having no more an individual being among men.

It is better, therefore, that men should soon make up their minds to be forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive, in what they do, than the approbation of men, which is Fame; namely, their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take care of itself.  Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection; impossible perhaps to achieve it wholly.  Yet the resolute, the indomitable will of man can achieve much,—­at times even this victory over himself; being persuaded, that fame comes only when deserved, and then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.

It has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in advance of their age; which is true.  There is something equally true, yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age.  As the German prose-poet says, every possible future is behind them.  We cannot suppose, that a period of time will ever come, when the world, or any considerable portion of it shall have come up abreast with these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.

And oh! how majestically they walk in history; some like the sun, with all his travelling glories round him; others wrapped in gloom, yet glorious as a night with stars.  Through the else silent darkness of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps.  Onward they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an earthly Paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them, and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors, as from the trail of pencils!