256 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



how many a withering satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the 

 tombstone brevity of a name and date ! Think of the aspira 

 tions, the dreams, the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of himself 

 and wife) in an impartial and generous posterity, and then 

 read Smith J. [ohn ?] 1713-1784 (?). &quot; The Vision of Immor 

 tality,&quot; an Epique Poem in twelve books, 1740, 4to. See 

 Loivndes? The time of his own death less certain than that 

 of his poem (which we may fix pretty safely in 1740), and the 

 only posterity that took any interest in him the indefatigable 

 compiler to whom a name was valuable in proportion as it was 

 obscure. Well, to have even so much as your title-page read 

 after it has rounded the corner of its first century, and to enjoy 

 a posthumous public of one is better than nothing. This is the 

 true Valhalla of Mediocrity, the Libra d oro of the onymi- 

 anonymi, of the never-named authors who exist only in name. 

 Parson Adams would be here had he found a printer for his 

 sermons, and Mr. Primrose, if a copy existed of his tracts on 

 monogamy. Papyrorcetes junior will turn here with justifiable 

 pride to the name of his respectable progenitor. Here we are 

 secure of perpetuity at least, if of nothing better, and are sons, 

 though we may not be heirs, of fame. Here is a handy and 

 inexpensive substitute for the waxen imagines of the Roman 

 patriciate, for those must have been inconvenient to pack on a 

 change of lodgings, liable to melt in warm weather (even the 

 elder Brutus himself might soften in the dog-days) and not 

 readily saleable unless to some novus homo willing to buy a set 

 of ancestors ready-made, as some of our own enthusiasts in 

 genealogy are said to order a family-tree from the heraldic 

 nurseryman, skilled to imp a slip of Scroggins on a stock of De 

 Vere or Montmorenci. Fame, it should seem, like electricity, is 

 both positive and negative, and if a writer must be Somebody 

 to make himself of permanent interest to the world at large, he 

 must not less be Nobody to have his namelessness embalmed 

 by M. Gue rard. The benignity of Providence is nowhere more 

 clearly to be seen than in its compensations. As there is a 

 large class of men madly desirous to decipher cuneiform and 

 other inscriptions, simply because of their illegibility, so there 

 is another class driven by a like irresistible instinct to the 

 reprinting of unreadable books. Whether these have even a 

 philologic value for us depends on the accuracy and learning 

 l3estowed upon them by the editor. 



For there is scarcely any rubbish-heap of literature out of 

 which something precious may not be raked by the diligent 



