y thoughts, as well as of repeating what
was said at our table, you may read what follows as if it were addressed
to you in the course of an ordinary conversation, where I claimed rather
more than my share, as I am afraid I am a little in the habit of doing.

I suppose we all, those of us who write in verse or prose, have the
habitual feeling that we should like to be remembered. It is to be awake
when all of those who were round us have been long wrapped in slumber.
It is a pleasant thought enough that the name by which we have been
called shall be familiar on the lips of those who come after us, and the
thoughts that wrought themselves out in our intelligence, the emotions
that trembled through our frames, shall live themselves over again in
the minds and hearts of others.

But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the thought of gently
and gradually fading away out of human remembrance? What line have we
written 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