If a degree of reputation is sometimes secured by this servility, it cannot however be a solid and lasting one. It may answer the purpose of him who desires to impose upon others a temporary delusion, but a man of generous ambition will spurn it from him with contempt. Nothing is more mortifying than that species of reputation, which the least discernment would show us was immediately to be succeeded by infamy or oblivion.

He that would gain in any valuable sense the suffrage of the world, must show himself in a certain degree superior to this suffrage.

But, though reputation will never constitute, with a man of wisdom and virtue, the first and leading motive of his actions, it will certainly enter into his consideration. Virtue is a calculation of consequences, is a means to an end, is a balance carefully adjusted between opposing evils and benefits. Perhaps there is no action, in a state of civilisation and refinement, that is not influenced by innumerable motives; and there is no reason to believe that virtue will tend to diminish the subtlety and delicacy of intellectual sensation. Reputation is valuable; and whatever is of value ought to enter into our estimates. A just and reasonable man will be anxious so to conduct himself as that he may not be misunderstood. He will be patient in explaining, where his motives have been

misapprehended and misconstrued. It is a spirit of false bravado that will not descend to vindicate itself from misrepresentation. It is the refuge of indolence; is is an unmanly pride that prefers a mistaken superiority to the promotion of truth and usefulness. Real integrity ought not indeed to be sore and exasperated at every petty attack. Some things will explain themselves; and in that case defence appears idle and injudicious. A defence of this sort is an exhibition of mental disease, not an act of virtue. But, wherever explanation will set right a single individual, and cannot be attended with mischief, there explanation appears to be true dignity and true wisdom.

ESSAY VIII.

OF POSTHUMOUS FAME.

THE distribution of individual reputation is determined by principles in a striking degree capricious and absurd. Those who undertake to be the benefactors of mankind from views of this sort, are too often made in the close of their career to devour all the bitterness of disappointment, and are ready to exclaim, as Brutus is falsely represented to have done, "Oh, virtue! I followed thee as a

substantial good, but I find thee to be no more than a delusive shadow!" *

It is common however for persons, overwhelmed with this sort of disappointment, to console themselves with an appeal to posterity, and to observe that future generations, when the venom of party has subsided, when their friendships and animo

* The only historian by whom this infamous story is told, is Dion Cassius, the professed flatterer of tyrants, the bitter enemy of liberty and virtue. It is curious to observe how the tale was manufactured. Plutarch relates that, a short time before his death, Brutus repeated two scraps of poetry, of which Volumnius, the philosopher, his friend, remembered one, and forgot the other. The first was an imprecation against the successful wickedness of Antony. This hint was enough for the malignity of Dion to work upon. Dion lived more than one hundred years after Plutarch. He sought in Euripides, Brutus's favourite poet, for a passage that might serve to fix a stain on the illustrious patriot, and he found one to his purpose. The last words that Plutarch relates of Brutus are: "I do not complaine of my fortune, but onely for my countries sake: for, as for me, I thinke my selfe happier then they that have ouercome, considering that I haue a perpetuall fame of our courage and manhood, the which our enemies the conquerors shall neuer attaine vnto." Plutarch, by Sir Thomas North.

Another silly story has been propagated for the purpose of injuring Brutus's character, that he was the son of Cæsar. This will be sufficiently refuted by the bare statement that there was but fourteen years' difference between their ages. Middleton, life of Cicero, Section VIII. Middleton by mistake sets down the difference as fifteen years,

sities are forgotten, when misrepresentation shall no longer disfigure their actions, will not fail to do them justice.

Let us enquire into the soundness of this opinion. The more we consider it, the more perhaps we shall find this last prop of what may be styled, a generous vanity, yielding a very uncertain support.

To posterity we may apply what Montaigne has remarked of antiquity, "It is an object of a peculiar sort; distance magnifies it." If we are to judge from experience, it does not appear that that pos terity upon which the great men of former ages rested their hopes, has displayed all that virtue, that inflexible soundness of judgment, and that marvellous perspicacity of discernment, which were prognosticated of it before it came into exist

ence.

Let us take the case of literary reputation.

It is a well-known remark that the reputation of philosophers, natural historians, and writers of science is intrinsically and unalterably of a perishable nature. Science is progressive; one man builds upon the discoveries of another; one writer drives another off the stage of literature; that which was laudable and excellent when first produced, as mankind advance, necessarily appears childish, inept, garrulous, and full of error and absurdity.

Art affords a more permanent title to fame than science. The poets and fine writers of antiquity still appear to us excellent; while the visions of Plato, and the arrangements of Aristotle, have no longer a place but in the brains of a few dreaming and obscure individuals.

Poetry itself however affords but an uncertain reputation. Is Pope a poet? Is Boileau a poet? These are questions still vehemently contested. The French despise the tragic poetry of England, and the English repay their scorn with scorn. A few scholars, who are disposed to rest much of their reputation on their Greek, affirm Sophocles to be the greatest dramatic author that ever existed, while the generality of readers exclaim upon him as feeble in passion and barren in interest. The unlearned are astonished what we can find to be so greatly charmed with, in the imitative genius of Virgil, and the sententious rambles of Horace. The reputation of Shakespear endures every day a new ordeal; while some find in him nothing but perfection, and others are unable to forgive the occasional obscurity of his style, pedantry of his language, meanness of his expressions, and disproportion of his images. Homer has stood the test of more than two thousand years; yet there are hundreds of no contemptible judges who regard his fame as ill-grounded and usurping. They are mortally offended with the ridiculousness