ch is that little to him who feels it!

34. Fame does not depend on the _will_ of any man, but Reputation
may be given or taken away. Fame is the sympathy of kindred
intellects, and sympathy is not a subject of _willing_; while
Reputation, having its source in the popular voice, is a sentence
which may either be uttered or suppressed at pleasure. Reputation,
being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of
the envious and the ignorant; but Fame, whose very birth is
_posthumous_, and which is only known _to exist by the echo of
its footsteps through congenial minds_, can neither be increased
nor diminished by any degree of will.

35. What _light_ is in the natural world, such is _fame_
in the intellectual; both requiring an _atmosphere_ in order
to become perceptible. Hence the fame of Michael Angelo is, to some
minds, a nonentity; even as the sun itself would be invisible _in
vacuo_.

36. Fame has no necessary conjunction with Praise: it may exist without
the breath of a word; it is a _recognition of excellence_, which _must
be felt_, but need not be _spoken_. Even the envious must feel it,--feel
it, and hate it, in silence.

37. I cannot believe that any man who deserved fame ever labored for
it; that is, _directly_. For, as fame is but the contingent of
excellence, it would be like an attempt to project a shadow, before
its substance was obtained. Many, however, have so fancied. "I write,
I paint, for fame," has often been repeated: it should have been, "I
write, I paint, for reputation." All anxiety, therefore, about Fame
should be placed to the account of Reputation.

38. A man may be pretty sure that he has not attained
_excellence_, when it is not all in all to him. Nay, I may add,
that, if he looks beyond it, he has not reached it. This is not the
less true for being good _Irish_.

39. An original mind is rarely understood, until it has been
_reflected_ from some half-dozen congenial with it, so averse
are men to admitting the _true_ in an unusual form; whilst any
novelty, however fantastic, however false, is greedily swallowed. Nor
is this to be wondered at; for all truth demands a response, and few
people care to _think_, yet they must have something to supply
the place of thought. Every mind would appear original, if every man
had the power of _projecting_ his own into the mind of others.

40. All effort at originality must end either in the quaint or the
monstrous. For no man knows himse