that was on a level with our conceptions? What page of ours that
does not betray some weakness we would fain have left unrecorded? To
become a classic and share the life of a language is to be ever open to
criticisms, to comparisons, to the caprices of successive generations, to
be called into court and stand a trial before a new jury, once or more
than once in every century. To be forgotten is to sleep in peace with
the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the
blasts, the sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that
shadow of a man which we call his reputation. The line which dying we
could wish to blot has been blotted out for us by a hand so tender, so
patient, so used to its kindly task, that the page looks as fair as if it
had never borne the record of our infirmity or our transgression. And
then so few would be wholly content with their legacy of fame. You
remember poor Monsieur Jacques's complaint of the favoritism shown to
Monsieur Berthier,--it is in that exquisite "Week in a French
Country-House." "Have you seen his room? Have you seen how large it is?
Twice as large as mine! He has two jugs, a large one and a little one.
I have only one small one. And a tea-service and a gilt Cupid on the top
of his looking-glass." The famous survivor of himself has had his
features preserved in a medallion, and the slice of his countenance seems
clouded with the thought that it does not belong to a bust; the bust
ought to look happy in its niche, but the statue opposite makes it feel
as if it had been cheated out of half its personality, and the statue
looks uneasy because another stands on a loftier pedestal. But "Ignotus"
and "Miserrimus" are of the great majority in that vast assembly, that
House of Commons whose members are all peers, where to be forgotten is
the standing rule. The dignity of a silent memory is not to be
undervalued. Fame is after all a kind of rude handling, and a name that
is often on vulgar lips seems to borrow something not to be desired, as
the paper money that passes from hand to hand gains somewhat which is a
loss thereby. O sweet, tranquil refuge of oblivion, so far as earth is
concerned, for us poor blundering, stammering, misbehaving creatures who
cannot turn over a leaf of our life's diary without feeling thankful that
its failure can no longer stare us in the face! Not unwelcome shall be
the baptism of dust which hides forever the name that wa