ovels may be selected as specially
enthralling.' The pundit answers: 'We have no novels addressed to
the passions that are good for anything, if you mean that kind of
enthralment.' And here some poor wretch (whose name the disciple will
not remember) inquires: 'Are not Mrs. Glyn's novels addressed to the
passions?' and is in due form annihilated. Can it be that a time will
come when readers of this passage in our pundit's Life will take more
interest in the poor nameless wretch than in all the bearers of those
great names put together, being no more able or anxious to discriminate
between (say) Mrs. Ward and Mr. Sinclair than we are to set Ogden above
Sherlock, or Sherlock above Ogden? It seems impossible. But we must
remember that things are not always what they seem.

Every man illustrious in his day, however much he may be gratified by
his fame, looks with an eager eye to posterity for a continuance of past
favours, and would even live the remainder of his life in obscurity if
by so doing he could insure that future generations would preserve a
correct attitude towards him forever. This is very natural and human,
but, like so many very natural and human things, very silly. Tillotson
and the rest need not, after all, be pitied for our neglect of them.
They either know nothing about it, or are above such terrene trifles.
Let us keep our pity for the seething mass of divines who were not
elegantly verbose, and had no fun or glory while they lasted. And let us
keep a specially large portion for one whose lot was so much worse than
merely undistinguished. If that nameless curate had not been at the
Thrales' that day, or, being there, had kept the silence that so well
became him, his life would have been drab enough, in all conscience. But
at any rate an unpromising career would not have been nipped in the bud.
And that is what in fact happened, I'm sure of it. A robust man might
have rallied under the blow. Not so our friend. Those who knew him in
infancy had not expected that he would be reared. Better for him had
they been right. It is well to grow up and be ordained, but not if you
are delicate and very sensitive, and shall happen to annoy the greatest,
the most stentorian and roughest of contemporary personages. 'A
Clergyman' never held up his head or smiled again after the brief
encounter recorded for us by Boswell. He sank into a rapid decline.
Before the next blossoming of Thrale Hall's almond trees he was no more.