348 LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 



the Books. There our hearts are touched with some- 

 thing of the same vague pathos that dims the eye in 

 some deserted graveyard. The brief span of our earthly 

 immortalities is brought home to us as nowhere else. 

 What a necrology of notability ! How many a contro- 

 versialist, terrible in his day, how many a rising genius 

 that somehow stuck on the horizon, how many a wither- 

 ing satirist, lies here shrunk all away to the tombstone 

 brevity of a name and date ! Think of the aspirations, 

 the dreams, the hopes, the toil, the confidence (of him- 

 self and wife) in an impartial and generous posterity, — 

 and then read "Smith J. [ohnfj 1713-1784 (1). The 

 Vision of Immortality, an Epique Poem in twelve books, 

 1740, 4to. See Lowndes." 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. Papyror- 

 cetes 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 in- 

 convenient 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 salable 



