ay. Present effect is their end and aim; and
too many of them, especially the ablest, who have wanted only moral worth
to make them capable of better things, are persons who can "desire no
other mercy from after ages than silence and oblivion." Even with the
better part of the public that author will always obtain the most
favourable reception, who keeps most upon a level with them in
intellectuals, and puts them to the least trouble of thinking. He who
addresses himself with the whole endeavours of a powerful mind to the
understanding faculty may find fit readers; but they will be few. He who
labours for posterity in the fields of research, must look to posterity
for his reward. Nay, even they whose business is with the feelings and
the fancy, catch most fish when they angle in shallow waters. Is it not
so, Piscator?
_Montesinos_.--In such honest anglers, Sir Thomas, I should look for as
many virtues, as good old happy Izaak Walton found in his brethren of the
rod and line. Nor will you, I think, disparage them; for you were of the
Rhymers' Company, and at a time when things appear to us in their true
colours and proportion (if ever while we are yet in the body), you
remembered your verses with more satisfaction than your controversial
writings, even though you had no misgivings concerning the part which you
had chosen.
_Sir Thomas More_.--My verses, friend, had none of the _athanasia_ in
their composition. Though they have not yet perished, they cannot be
said to have a living existence; even you, I suspect, have sought for
them rather because of our personal acquaintance than for any other
motive. Had I been only a poet, those poems, such as they were, would
have preserved my name; but being remembered for other grounds, better
and worse, the name which I have left has been one cause why they have
passed into oblivion, sooner than their perishable nature would have
carried them thither. If in the latter part of my mortal existence I had
misgivings concerning any of my writings, they were of the single one,
which is still a living work, and which will continue so to be. I feared
that speculative opinions, which had been intended for the possible but
remote benefit of mankind, might, by unhappy circumstances, be rendered
instrumental to great and immediate evil; an apprehension, however, which
was altogether free from self-reproach.
But my verses will continue to exist in their mummy state, long after t
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