n these five years are not undesirable
to him: but mark, I say, this enormous circumstance: _after_
these five years are gone and done, comes an Eternity for Oliver!
Oliver has to appear before the Most High judge: the utmost flow
of Paragraphs, the utmost ebb of them, is now, in strictest
arithmetic, verily no matter at all; its exact value _zero;_ an
account altogether erased! Enormous;--which a man, in these
days, hardly fancies with an effort! Oliver's Paragraphs are all
done, his battles, division-lists, successes all summed: and now
in that awful unerring Court of Review, the real question first
rises, Whether he has succeeded at all; whether he has not been
defeated miserably forevermore? Let him come with world-wide
_Io-Paens,_ these avail him not. Let him come covered over with
the world's execrations, gashed with ignominious death-wounds,
the gallows-rope about his neck: what avails that? The word
is, Come thou brave and faithful; the word is, Depart thou
quack and accursed!

O Windbag, my right honourable friend, in very truth I pity thee.
I say, these Paragraphs, and low or loud votings of thy poor
fellow-blockheads of mankind, will never guide thee in any
enterprise at all. Govern a country on such guidance? Thou
canst not make a pair of shoes, sell a pennyworth of tape, on
such. No, thy shoes are vamped up falsely to meet the market;
behold, the leather only _seemed_ to be tanned; thy shoes melt
under me to rubbishy pulp, and are not veritable mud-defying
shoes, but plausible vendible similitudes of shoes,--thou
unfortunate, and I! O my right honourable friend, when the
Paragraphs flowed in, who was like Sir Jabesh? On the swelling
tide he mounted; higher, higher, triumphant, heaven-high. But
the Paragraphs again ebbed out, as unwise Paragraphs needs must:
Sir Jabesh lies stranded, sunk and forever sinking in ignominious
ooze; the Mud-nymphs, and ever-deepening bottomless Oblivion,
his portion to eternal time. 'Posterity?' Thou appealest to
Posterity, thou? My right honourable friend, what will Posterity
do for thee! The voting of Posterity, were it continued through
centuries in thy favour, will be quite inaudible, extra-forensic,
without any effect whatever. Posterity can do simply nothing for
a man; nor even seem to do much, if the man be not brainsick.
Besides, to tell thee truth, the bets are a thousand to one,
Posterity will not hear of thee, my right honourable friend