FOR one who was no great politician, nor (as men go) especially wise,
capable or virtuous, Charles of Orleans is more than usually enviable to
all who love that better sort of fame which consists in being known not
widely, but intimately. “To be content that time to come should know
there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, or to
subsist under naked denominations, without deserts or noble acts,” is,
says Sir Thomas Browne, a frigid ambition. It is to some more specific
memory that youth looks forward in its vigils. Old kings are sometimes
disinterred in all the emphasis of life, the hands untainted by decay,
the beard that had so often wagged in camp or senate still spread upon
the royal bosom; and in busts and pictures, some similitude of the great
and beautiful of former days is handed down. In this way, public
curiosity may be gratified, but hardly any private aspiration after fame.
It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not
impossible that it may respect or sympathise; and so a man would rather
leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face,
_figura animi magis quam corporis_. Of those who have thus survived
themselves most completely, left a sort of personal seduction behind them
in the world, and retained, after death, the art of making friends,
Montaigne and Samuel Johnson certainly stand first. But we have
portraits of all sorts of men, from august Cæsar to the king’s dwarf; and
all sorts of portraits, from a Titian treasured in the Louvre to a
profile over the grocer’s chimney shelf. And so in a less degree, but no
less truly, than the spirit of Montaigne lives on in the delightful
Essays, that of Charles of Orleans survives in a few old songs and old
account-books; and it is still in the choice of the reader to make this
duke’s acquaintance, and, if their humours suit, become his friend.