Blackwood´s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 94
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| Hersteller: | Forgotten Books (Blackwood, William) |
| Stand: | 2015-08-04 03:50:33 |
Produktbeschreibung
Excerpt from Blackwood´s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 94: July December, 1863 "Ours" - they exclaim, in the spirit of Scandinavian Vikings - "Ours the brief epitaph in danger´s day, When those who win at length divide the prey, And cry - remembrance saddening o´er each brow - ´How had the brave who fell exulted now!" But if the bad cannot banish a desire to live after death in the affection even of the bad, where is the good man who, trained throughout life to value honour, can turn cynic on his deathbed, and say, "Let me in life enjoy the profitable credit for honesty, and I care not if, after death, my name be held that of a knave"? All of us, then, however humble, so far covet posthumous reputation that we would fain be spoken and thought of with affection and esteem by those whose opinions we have prized, even when we are beyond the sound of their voices and the clasp of their hands. Such reputation may be (as with most of us it is) but a brief deferment of oblivion - the suspense of a year, a month, a day, before the final cancel and effacement of our footprint on the sands of Time. But some kindly reminiscence in some human hearts man intuitively yearns to bequeath; and the hope of it comforts him as he turns his face to the wall to die. But if this be a desire common to the great mass of our species, it must evidently rise out of the affections common to all - it is a desire for love, not a thirst for glory. This is not what is usually meant and understood by the phrase of posthumous reputation; it is not the renown accorded to the exceptional and rare intelligences which soar above the level of mankind. And here we approach a subject of no uninteresting speculation - viz., the distinction between that love for posthumous though brief repute which emanates from the affections and the moral sentiment, and that greed of posthumous and lasting renown which has been considered the craving, not of the heart nor of the moral sentiment, but rather of the intellect, and therefore limited to those who have the skill and the strength to vie for the palm awarded to the victor only when his chariot-wheels halt and the race is done. Competitors are many; victors, alas! are few. Out of all the myriads who have tenanted our earth, the number even of eminent intellects which retain place in its archives is startlingly small. The vast democracy of the dead are represented by an oligarchy to which that of Venice was liberal. Although successive races of laborious compilers and reverential antiquarians do their utmost to preserve in dusty shelves the bones and fossils of every specimen of man which has left a vestige of its being in the layers and strata of the past, it were as well, to a lover of fame, to sleep in his grave ignored, as to be dishumed, a forlorn fragment of what he once was, and catalogued alphabetically in a Biographical Dictionary. Let us suppose some youthful poet whose heart is now beating loud with the immense desire of praise to whom his guardian angel lifts the veil of Futurity, and saith, "Thy name shall be preserved from oblivion. Lo !its nee in yon compendium of embalmed celebrities, which scholars shall compile five centuries after thy decease. Read and exult!" The poet (his name be Jones) reads as follows under the letter J: - "Jones, David, a British author in the reign of Victoria I. Wrote many poems much esteemed by his contemporaries, some few fragments of which have been collected in the recent ´Anthology´ of his learned and ingenious countryman, Professor Morgan Apreece; and, though characterised by the faults prevalent in his period, are not without elegance and fancy. Died at Caermarthen A.D. 1892." About the Publisher For
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