His Life and Genius 157 



ments of the human drama on this little ball of 

 earth, and grasped its infinitesimal significance in 

 the cosmic course of things, should set much store 

 by thoughts of what would not concern him in 

 the least when he was not ? Why, having so short 

 a lease, disquiet himself in vain about what might 

 be in the eternity after he was, any more than 

 about that which was in the eternity before he 

 was ? Seeing that the people then alive would 

 be the same sort of mechanical mortals, moved 

 by the same passions in their limited circle, going 

 through the same routine of plays in the same 

 automatic fashion, the actors only changed, it was 

 of small import what they might think of him 

 and his work. Within the brief date and span 

 of every life eagerly aspired aims once passion- 

 ately pursued come to look like the remembrance 

 of toys which pleased in childhood. In the mind 

 only of him who imagines it is the joy of pos- 

 thumous fame ; to nobody is it fame when he is, 

 and it is nothing to him when he is not. Small 

 then might its mortal attractiveness seem to one 

 whose large outsight could calmly view this great 

 stage of the world as presenting naught but 

 shows and men as such stuff as dreams are 

 made of ; whose retrospective imagination took 

 remote survey of blind oblivion swallowing cities 

 up, and " mighty States characterless grated to 

 dusty nothing " ; yea, who foresaw in prospective 

 imagination the time to come when, " like the 

 baseless fabric of a vision," 



