90 ADVANCEMENT OK LEARNING. [BOOK IL 



hell s, in whom I hope it is established for ever, seems by the 

 providence of God to have undergone these mutations and 

 deflections as a prelude to stability. 



With regard to lives, we cannot but wonder that our own 

 times have so little value for what they enjoy, as not more 

 frequently to write the lives of eminent men. For though 

 kings, princes, and great personages are few, yet there are 

 many other excellent men who deserve better than vague 

 reports and barren elogies. Here the fancy of a late poet, 

 who has improved an ancient fiction, is not inapplicable. 

 He feigns that at the end of the thread of every man s life, 

 there hung a medal, on which the name of the deceased is 

 stamped ; and that Time, waiting upon the shears of the fatal 

 sister, as soon as the thread was cut, caught the medals, 

 and threw them out of his bosom into the river Lethe. He 

 also represented many birds flying over its banks, who 

 caught the medals in their beaks, and after carrying them 

 about for a certain time, allowed them to fall in the river. 

 Among these birds were a few swans, who used, if they caught 

 a medal, to carry it to a certain temple consecrated to im 

 mortality. Such swans, however, are rare in our age. And 

 although many, more mortal in their affections than their 

 bodies, esteem the desire of fame and memoiy but a vanity, 

 and despise praise, whilst they do nothing that is praise 

 worthy, &quot; animos nil maguse laudis egentes ;&quot; c yet their phi 

 losophy springs from the root, &quot; non prius laudes contera- 

 psimus quam laudanda facere desivimus ; &quot; and does not 

 alter Solomon s judgment, &quot; the memory of the just shall be 

 with praises ; but the name of the wicked shall rot ; &quot; d the&quot; 

 one flourishing, whilst the other consumes or turns to cor 

 ruption. So in that laudable way of speaking of the dead, 

 &quot; of happy memory ! of pious memory ! &quot; &c., we seem to 

 acknowledge, with Cicero and Demosthenes, &quot; that a good 

 name is the proper inheritance of the deceased ;&quot; e which in 

 heritance is lying waste in our time, and deserves to be 

 noticed as a deficiency. 



In the business of relations it is, also, to be wished that 

 greater diligence were employed ; for there is no signal 

 Action, but has some good pen to iescribe it. But very few 



jEu, *, 751. d Prov. x. 7. Demosth. adv. Lept. 488. 



