sterity lies through a horribly dreary
region, like the Lybian desert, of which, as is well known, no one has
any idea who has not seen it for himself. Meanwhile let me before
all things recommend the traveler to take light baggage with him;
otherwise he will have to throw away too much on the road. Let him
never forget the words of Balthazar Gracian: _lo bueno si breve, dos
vezes bueno_--good work is doubly good if it is short. This advice is
specially applicable to my own countrymen.

Compared with the short span of time they live, men of great intellect
are like huge buildings, standing on a small plot of ground. The size
of the building cannot be seen by anyone, just in front of it; nor,
for an analogous reason, can the greatness of a genius be estimated
while he lives. But when a century has passed, the world recognizes it
and wishes him back again.

If the perishable son of time has produced an imperishable work, how
short his own life seems compared with that of his child! He is like
Semela or Maia--a mortal mother who gave birth to an immortal son; or,
contrarily, he is like Achilles in regard to Thetis. What a contrast
there is between what is fleeting and what is permanent! The short
span of a man's life, his necessitous, afflicted, unstable existence,
will seldom allow of his seeing even the beginning of his immortal
child's brilliant career; nor will the father himself be taken for
that which he really is. It may be said, indeed, that a man whose fame
comes after him is the reverse of a nobleman, who is preceded by it.

However, the only difference that it ultimately makes to a man to
receive his fame at the hands of contemporaries rather than from
posterity is that, in the former case, his admirers are separated
from him by space, and in the latter by time. For even in the case
of contemporary fame, a man does not, as a rule, see his admirers
actually before him. Reverence cannot endure close proximity; it
almost always dwells at some distance from its object; and in the
presence of the person revered it melts like butter in the sun.
Accordingly, if a man is celebrated with his contemporaries,
nine-tenths of those amongst whom he lives will let their esteem be
guided by his rank and fortune; and the remaining tenth may perhaps
have a dull consciousness of his high qualities, because they have
heard about him from remote quarters. There is a fine Latin letter of
Petrarch's on this incompatibility between