CHAPTER CXXIV.

THE AUTHOR MORALIZES UPON THE VANITY OF FAME; AND WISHES THAT HE HAD BOSWELLIZED WHILE IT WAS IN HIS POWER TO HAVE DONE SO.

Mucho tengo que llorar,
Mucho tengo que reir.
                                  GONGORA.

It is a melancholy consideration that Fame is as unjust as Fortune. To Fortune indeed injustice ought not to be imputed, for Fortune is blind, and disposes of her favours at random. But Fame with all her eyes and ears and tongues, overlooks more than she perceives, and sees things often in a wrong light, and hears and reports as many falsehoods as truths.

We need not regret that the warriors who lived before Agamemnon should be forgotten, for the world would have been no worse if many of those who lived after him had been forgotten in like manner. But the wise also perish, and leave no memorial. What do we know of “Ethan the Ezrahite, and Heman and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of Mahol,” whom it was accounted an honour for Solomon to have excelled in wisdom? Where is now the knowledge for which Gwalchmai ab Gwyar, and Llechau ab Arthur, and Rhiwallawn Wallt Banadlen were leashed in a Triad as the three Physiologists or Philosophers of the Isle of Britain; because “there was nothing of which they did not know its material essence, and its properties, whether of kind, or of part, or of quality, or of compound, or of coincidence, or of tendency, or of nature, or of essence, whatever it might be?” Where is their knowledge? where their renown? They are now “merely nuda nomina, naked names!” “For there is no remembrance of the wise, more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is, in the days to come shall all be forgotten!”

        ——If our virtues
Did not go forth of us, 'twere all alike
As if we had them not.1

The Seven Wise Men have left almost as little as the Sybils.

1 SHAKESPEAR.

“What satisfaction,” says Sir John Hawkins, “does the mind receive from the recital of the names of those who are said to have increased the chords of the primitive lyre from four to seven, Chorebus, Hyagius, and Terpander? Or when we are told that Olympus invented the enarmonic genus, as also the Harmatian mood? Or that Eumolpus and Melampus were excellent musicians, and Pronomus, Antigenides and Lamia celebrated players on the flute? In all these instances, where there are no circumstances that constitute a character, and familiarize to us the person spoken of, we naturally enquire who he is, and for want of farther information become indifferent as to what is recorded of him.” The same most learned and judicious historian of his favourite art, laments that most of the many excellent musicians who flourished in the ages preceding our own, are all but utterly forgotten. “Of Tye,” he says, “of Redford, Shephard, Douland, Weelkes, Welbye, Est, Bateson, Hilton and Brewer, we know little more than their names. These men composed volumes which are now dispersed and irretrievably lost; yet did their compositions suggest those ideas of the power and efficacy of music, and those descriptions of its manifold charms, that occur in the verses of our best poets.”

Is there one of my Readers in a thousand who knows that Philistes was a Greco-Phœnician, or Phœnico-Grecian Queen of Malta and Gozo, before the Carthaginians obtained the dominion of those islands, in which their language continues living, though corrupted, to this day?—Are there ten men in Cornwall who know that Medacritus was the name of the first man who carried tin from that part of the world?

What but his name is now known of Romanianus, who in St. Augustin's opinion was the greatest genius that ever lived; and how little is his very name known now! What is now remembered “of the men of renown before the Flood?” Sir Walter Raleigh hath a chapter concerning them, wherein he says, “of the war, peace, government and policy of these strong and mighty men, so able both in body and wit, there is no memory remaining; whose stories if they had been preserved, and what else was then performed in that newness of the world, there could nothing of more delight have been left to posterity. For the exceeding long lives of men, (who to their strength of body and natural wits had the experience added of eight and nine hundred years,) how much of necessity must the same add of wisdom and understanding? Likely it is that their works excelled all whatsoever can be told of after-times; especially in respect of this old age of the world, when we no sooner begin to know than we begin to die: according to Hippocrates, Vita brevis, ars longa, tempus præceps, which is, life is short, art is long, and time is headlong. And that those people of the first age performed many things worthy of admiration, it may be gathered out of these words of Moses, these were mighty men, which in old time were men of renown.” What is known of them now? Their very names have perished!

Who now can explain the difference between the Agenorian, the Eratoclean, the Epigonian, and the Damonian sects of musicians, or knows any thing more than the names of their respective founders, except that one of them was Socrates's music-master?

What Roman of the age of Horace would have believed that a contemporaneous Consul's name should only live to posterity, as a record of the date of some one of the Poet's odes?

Who now remembers that memorable Mr. Clinch, “whose single voice, as he had learned to manage it, could admirably represent a number of persons at sport, and in hunting, and the very dogs and other animals,”—himself a whole pack and a whole field in full cry: “but none better than a quire of choristers chanting an Anthem”—himself a whole quire.

“How subdued,” says Mr. David Laing, who has rescued from oblivion so much that is worthy of being held in remembrance,—“how subdued is the interest that attaches to a mere name, as for instance, to that of Dunbar's contemporaries, Stobo, Quintyne, or St. John the Ross, whose works have perished!”

Who was that famous singer nick-named Bonny Boots, who, because of his excellent voice, or as Sir John Hawkins says, “for some other reason, had permission to call Queen Elizabeth his Lady:” and of whom it is said in the canzonet,

             Our Bonny Boots could toot it,
                          Yea and foot it,
Say lusty lads, who now shall Bonny-Boot it?

Sir John thinks it might “possibly be one Mr. Hale.” But what is Fame when it ends in a poor possibility that Bonny Boots who called the Queen his Lady, and that Queen, not Bergami's popular Queen, but Queen Elizabeth, the nation's glorious Queen Elizabeth, the people's good Queen Bess,—what, I repeat, is Fame, when it ends in a mere conjecture that the Bonny Boots who was permitted to call such a Queen his Lady, might be “one Hale or Hales in whose voice she took some pleasure.” Well might Southey say

Fame's loudest blast upon the ear of Time
Leaves but a dying echo!

And what would posterity have heard of my Dove, my Daniel, my Doctor,—my Doctor Daniel Dove,—had it not been for these my patient and humble labours;—patient, but all too slow; humble, if compared with what the subject deserves, and yet ambitious, in contemplation of that desert, that inadequate as they are, they will however make the subject known; so that my Dove, my Daniel, my Doctor, shall be every-body's Dove, every-body's Daniel, every-body's Doctor,—yea the World's Doctor, the World's Doctor Daniel Dove!

O his desert speaks loud; and I should wrong it,
To lock it in the wards of covert bosom,
When it deserves with characters of brass
A forted residence, 'gainst the tooth of time
And razure of oblivion.2

2 MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Alas that there should have been in that generation but one Boswell. Why did Nature break his mould? Why did she not make two? for I would not have had Johnson deprived of what may almost be called his better part;—but why were there not two Boswells, as there are two Dromios in the Comedy of Errors, and two Mr. Bulwers at this day, and three Hunchbacks in the Arabian Tale. Why was there not a duplicate Boswell, a fac-simile of the Laird of Auchinleck, an undistinguishable twin-brother, to have lived at Doncaster, and have followed my Doctor, like his dog, or his shadow, or St. Anthony's pig, and have gathered up the fragments of his wit and his wisdom, so that nothing should have been lost? Sinner that I am, that I should have had so little forethought in the golden days of youth and opportunity! As Brantôme says when speaking of Montluc, j'etois fort souvent avec luy, et m'aymoit fort, et prenoit grand plaisir quand je le mettois en propos et en train et luy faisois quelques demandes,—car je ne suis jamais esté si jeune, que je n'aye tousjours esté fort curieux d'apprendre; et luy, me voyant en cette volonte, il me respondoit de bon cœur, et en beaux termes; car il avoit une fort belle eloquence. Truly therefore may I say of thee, O my friend and master!

        ——s'alcun bel frutto
Nasce di me, da voi vien prima il seme.
Io per me son quasi un terreno asciutto
Colto da voi, e'l pregio è vostro in tutto. 3

3 PETRARCH.

Sinner that I was! not to have treasured up all his words when I enjoyed and delighted in his presence; improvident wretch! that I did not faithfully record them every night before I went to bed, while they were yet fresh in memory! How many things would I fain recall, which are now irrecoverably lost! How much is there, that if it were possible to call back the days that are past, I would eagerly ask and learn! But the hand of Time is on me. Non solebat mihi tam velox tempus videri; nunc incredibilis cursus apparet: sive quia admoveri lineas sentio, sive quia attendere cœpi et computare damnum meum. 4 I linger over these precious pages while I write, pausing and pondering in the hope that more recollections may be awakened from their long sleep; that one may jog and stir up another. By thus rummaging in the stores of memory many things which had long been buried there have been brought to light;—but O reader! how little is this all to what it might have been! It is but as a poor armful of gleanings compared to a waggon well piled with full sheaves, carrying the harvest home.

4 SENECA.

Here too I may apply with the alteration of only one word what that good man Gotthilf Franck says in his Preface to the History of the Danish Mission in India, as translated into Latin from Niecamp's German Work. Quamquam vero huic æquo desiderio gratificandi animum tanto promptiorem gessimus, quanto plus ad illustrationem nominis dilecti ex tali compendio redundaturum esse perspeximus, multa tamen impedimenta in dies subnata sunt, quo minus res in effectum dari potuerit. Siquidem ad ejusmodi epitomen accurate conscribendum et res præcipuas breviter complectendas non solum multum temporis, patientiæ et laboris, sed singularis etiam epitomatoris ἱκανοτης et dexteritas requiritur.

The Doctor himself was careless of Fame. As he did nothing to be seen of men, so he took no thought for anything through which he might be remembered by them. It was enough for him if his jests and whims and fancies and speculations, whether sportive or serious, pleased himself, brought a smile to his wife's lips and a dimple to her cheek, or a good-humoured frown which was hardly less agreeable, to her brow;—it was enough for him if they amused or astonished those to whom they were addressed. Something he had for every one within the sphere of his little rounds; a quip for this person and a crank for that; “nods and becks and wreathed smiles” for those who were in the May-day of youth, or the hey-day of hilarity and welfare; a moral saying in its place and a grave word in season; wise counsel kindly given for those who needed it, and kind words for all,—with which kind actions always kept pace, instead of limping slowly and ungraciously behind. But of the world beyond that circle, he thought as little as that world thought of him; nor had he the slightest wish for its applause. The passion which has been called “the last infirmity of noble minds” had no place in his;—for he was a man in quo, as Erasmus says of his Tutor Hegius, unum illud vel Momus ipse calumniari fortasse potuisset, quod famæ plus æquo negligens, nullam posteritatis haberet rationem.