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.
[Footnote 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]
[Footnote 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]
[Footnote 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.
[Footnote 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._