rs of starvation are not looked into, and our most eminent modern
novelist declares that, if he were snowed up in a remote inn with
"Bradshaw's Railway Guide" and the "Rambler" as the only books within
reach, he would assuredly not read the "Rambler." Perhaps hardly one
hundred students know how admirably good Johnson's preface to
Shakspere really is, and the "Lives of the Poets" are read only in
fragmentary fashion. Strange, is it not, that the man who made his
reputation by literature, the man who dominated the literary world of
his time with absolute sovereignty, should be saved from sinking out
of human memory only by means of the record of his lighter talk which
was kept by his faithful henchman? But for the wise pertinacity of
poor Boswell, the giant would have been forgotten even by the
generation which immediately followed him. His gallant and strenuous
efforts to gain fame really failed; his chance gossip and the amusing
tale of his eccentricities kept his name alive. Surely the irony of
fate was never better shown. Even this Titan would have had only a
bubble reputation but for the lucky accident which brought that
obscure Scotch laird to London.

Most piteous is the story of the poor souls who have sought to achieve
their share of immortality by literature. Go to our noble Museum and
look at the appalling expanse of books piled up yard upon yard to the
ceiling of the immense dome. Tons upon tons--Pelion on Ossa--of
literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was
wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish,
despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage
once possessed the breasts of those myriad writers, according to their
several dispositions. The piles rest in stately silence, and the
reputations of the authors are entombed.

As for the fighters who sought the bubble reputation even at the
cannon's mouth, who recks of their fierce struggles, their bitter
wounds, their brief success? Who knows the leaders of the superb host
that poured like a torrent from Torres Vedras to the Pyrenees, and
smote Napoleon to the earth? Who can name the leaders of the doomed
host that crossed the Beresina, and left their bones under the Russian
snows? High of heart the soldiers were when they set out on their wild
pilgrimage under their terrible leader, but soon they were lying by
thousands on the red field of Borodino, and the sound of their moaning
filled the night