Page:Lives of Poets-Laureate.djvu/152

138 A reference to "Gondibert," his most cherished production, awakens some sensation of melancholy. This poem, he fondly hoped was to transmit his name as a household word to unborn generations of Englishmen. His plays were written for temporary purposes. They were the exercise of the vocation he had selected for his honour and sustentation through life; but in "Gondibert" he had indulged in higher aspirations, and had challenged the admiration of posterity. He would exalt virtue, teach future ages how to live, and fame should be his immortal reward.

"He who writes an heroic poem," says he, in his postscript to that work, "leaves an estate entailed, and he gives a greater gift to posterity than to the present age; for a public benefit is best measured in the number of receivers; and our contemporaries are but few when reckoned with those who shall succeed.

"If thou art a malicious reader, thou wilt remember my preface, boldly confessed, that a main motive to this undertaking was a desire of fame, and thou mayst likewise say, I may very possibly not live to enjoy it. Truly, I have some years ago considered that fame, like time, only gets a reverence by long running; and that, like a river, it is narrowest where it is bred, and broadest afar off; but this concludes it not unprofitable, for he whose writings divert men from indiscretion and vice, becomes famous, as he is an example to others' endeavours: and exemplary writers are wiser than to depend on the gratuities of this world, since the kind looks and praises of the present age, for reclaiming a few, are not mentionable with those solid rewards in Heaven for a long and continual conversion of posterity."

The dreary oblivion into which the work has fallen presents a touching comment on the vanity of all such enthusiastic anticipations. It has passed the ordeal of a