Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/215

 A FORGOTTEN POET.

has been a vast deal of moralizing on the brevity of fame ever since that far-away day when mankind became sufficiently sophisticated to covet posthumous distinction. Yet, in reality, it is not so surprising that people should be forgotten as that they should be remembered, and remembered often for the sake of one swift, brave deed that cost no effort, or of a few lovely words thrown to the world in a moment of unconscious inspiration, when the writer little dreamed he was forging a chain strong enough to link him with the future. Occasionally, too, a species of immortality is conferred upon respectable mediocrity by the affection or the abhorrence it excites. The men whom Pope rhymed about because he hated them, the men to whom Lamb wrote so delightfully because he loved them, all live for us in the indestructible land of letters. It would be a hard matter to reckon up the sum of indebtedness which is thus innocently