第52章

But "Ignotus " and "Miserrimus " are of the great majority in that vast assembly, that House of Commons whose members are all peers, where to be forgotten is the standing rule.The dignity of a silent memory is not to be undervalued.Fame is after all a kind of rude handling, and a name that is often on vulgar lips seems to borrow something not to be desired, as the paper money that passes from hand to hand gains somewhat which is a loss thereby.O sweet, tranquil refuge of oblivion, so far as earth is concerned, for us poor blundering, stammering, misbehaving creatures who cannot turn over a leaf of our life's diary without feeling thankful that its failure can no longer stare us in the face! Not unwelcome shall be the baptism of dust which hides forever the name that was given in the baptism of water! We shall have good company whose names are left unspoken by posterity."Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century."I have my moods about such things as the Young Astronomer has, as we all have.There are times when the thought of becoming utterly nothing to the world we knew so well and loved so much is painful and oppressive; we gasp as if in a vacuum, missing the atmosphere of life we have so long been in the habit of breathing.Not the less are there moments when the aching need of repose comes over us and the requiescat in pace, heathen benediction as it is, sounds more sweetly in our ears than all the promises that Fame can hold out to us.

I wonder whether it ever occurred to you to reflect upon another horror there must be in leaving a name behind you.Think what a horrid piece of work the biographers make of a man's private history!

Just imagine the subject of one of those extraordinary fictions called biographies coming back and reading the life of himself, written very probably by somebody or other who thought he could turn a penny by doing it, and having the pleasure of seeing "His little bark attendant sail, Pursue the triumph and partake the gale."The ghost of the person condemned to walk the earth in a biography glides into a public library, and goes to the shelf where his mummied life lies in its paper cerements.I can see the pale shadow glancing through the pages and hear the comments that shape themselves in the bodiless intelligence as if they were made vocal by living lips.

"Born in July, 1776! " And my honored father killed at the battle of Bunker Hill! Atrocious libeller! to slander one's family at the start after such a fashion!

"The death of his parents left him in charge of his Aunt Nancy, whose tender care took the place of those parental attentions which should have guided and protected his infant years, and consoled him for the severity of another relative."--Aunt Nancy! It was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used to--she has been dead these eighty years, so there is no use in mincing matters--she used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that.And here she is made a saint of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did everything for me, is slandered by implication as a horrid tyrant "The subject of this commemorative history was remarkable for a precocious development of intelligence.An old nurse who saw him at the very earliest period of his existence is said to have spoken of him as one of the most promising infants she had seen in her long experience.At school he was equally remarkable, and at a tender age he received a paper adorned with a cut, inscribed REWARD OF MERIT."--I don't doubt the nurse said that,--there were several promising children born about that time.As for cuts, I got more from the schoolmaster's rattan than in any other shape.Didn't one of my teachers split a Gunter's scale into three pieces over the palm of my hand? And didn't I grin when I saw the pieces fly? No humbug, now, about my boyhood!

"His personal appearance was not singularly prepossessing.

Inconspicuous in stature and unattractive in features"--You misbegotten son of an ourang and grandson of an ascidian (ghosts keep up with science, you observe), what business have you to be holding up my person to the contempt of my posterity? Haven't Ibeen sleeping for this many a year in quiet, and don't the dandelions and buttercups look as yellow over me as over the best-looking neighbor I have in the dormitory? Why do you want to people the minds of everybody that reads your good-for-nothing libel which you call a "biography" with your impudent caricatures of a man who was a better-looking fellow than yourself, I 'll bet you ten to one, a man whom his Latin tutor called fommosus puer when he was only a freshman? If that's what it means to make a reputation,--to leave your character and your person, and the good name of your sainted relatives, and all you were, and all you had and thought and felt, so far as can be gathered by digging you out of your most private records, to be manipulated and bandied about and cheapened in the literary market as a chicken or a turkey or a goose is handled and bargained over at a provision stall, is n't it better to be content with the honest blue slate-stone and its inscription informing posterity that you were a worthy citizen and a respected father of a family?