rd condition on which the
bright reversion must be earned is the loss of life. Fame is the
recompense not of the living, but of the dead. The temple of fame stands
upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the
ashes of great men. Fame itself is immortal, but it is not begot till
the breath of genius is extinguished. For fame is not popularity, the
shout of the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal puff, the
soothing flattery of favour or of friendship; but it is the spirit of a
man surviving himself in the minds and thoughts of other men, undying
and imperishable. It is the power which the intellect exercises over the
intellect, and the lasting homage which is paid to it, as such,
independently of time and circumstances, purified from partiality and
evil-speaking. Fame is the sound which the stream of high thoughts,
carried down to future ages, makes as it flows--deep, distant,
murmuring evermore like the waters of the mighty ocean. He who has ears
truly touched to this music, is in a manner deaf to the voice of
popularity.--The love of fame differs from mere vanity in this, that
the one is immediate and personal, the other ideal and abstracted. It is
not the direct and gross homage paid to himself, that the lover of true
fame seeks or is proud of; but the indirect and pure homage paid to the
eternal forms of truth and beauty as they are reflected in his mind,
that gives him confidence and hope. The love of nature is the first
thing in the mind of the true poet: the admiration of himself the last.
A man of genius cannot well be a coxcomb; for his mind is too full of
other things to be much occupied with his own person. He who is
conscious of great powers in himself, has also a high standard of
excellence with which to compare his efforts: he appeals also to a test
and judge of merit, which is the highest, but which is too remote,
grave, and impartial, to flatter his self-love extravagantly, or puff
him up with intolerable and vain conceit. This, indeed, is one test of
genius and of real greatness of mind, whether a man can wait patiently
and calmly for the award of posterity, satisfied with the unwearied
exercise of his faculties, retired within the sanctuary of his own
thoughts; or whether he is eager to forestal his own immortality, and
mortgage it for a newspaper puff. He who thinks much of himself, will be
in danger of being forgotten by the rest of the world: he who is