A great library! What a mass of human misery is here commemorated!--how
many buried hopes surround us!
The author of that work was the greatest natural philosopher that ever
enlightened mankind. His biographers are now disputing whether at one
period of his life he was not of unsound mind--but all agree that he was
afterwards able to understand his own writings.
The author of those numerous volumes was logician, metaphysician,
natural historian, philosopher; his sanity was never doubted, and with
his last breath he regretted his birth, mourned over his life, expressed
his fear of death, and called upon the Cause of causes to pity him. His
slightest thoughts continued to domineer over the world for ages, until
they were in some measure silenced by those works which contain the
unfettered meditations of a very great man, who, being more careless
than corrupt in the administration of his high office, has gone down to
posterity, as
'The wisest, brightest, meanest, of mankind.'
For his wisdom has embalmed his meanness.
Those volumes contain the weighty, if not wise opinions of one who,
amidst penury and wretchedness, first learnt to moralize with companions
as poor and wretched as himself. Even in his latter years, when sought
by a monarch, and listened to with submission by all who approached him,
his life can scarcely be called a happy one; yet he must have enjoyed
some moments of triumph, if not of happiness, in contemplating the
severe but well-merited rebuke which he inflicted upon that courtier,
who could behold his difficulties with all the indifference that belongs
to good breeding, and then thought fit, in the hour of his success, to
encumber him with paltry praises.