If we come nearer our own time, we find it partly droll, partly
pathetic to see how the bubble reputations have been pricked one by
one. "Who now reads Bolingbroke?" asked Burke. Yes--who? The brilliant
many-sided man who once held the fortunes of the empire in his hand,
the specious philosopher, the unequalled orator is forgotten. How
large he loomed while his career lasted! He was one of the men who
ruled great England, and now he is away in the dark, and his books rot
in the recesses of dusty libraries. Where is the great Mr. Hayley? He
was arbiter of taste in literature; he thought himself a very much
greater man than Blake, and an admiring public bowed down to him.
Probably few living men have ever read a poem of Hayley's, and
certainly we cannot advise anybody to try unless his nerve is good. Go
a little farther back, and consider the fate of the distinguished
literary persons who were famous during the period which affected
writers call the Augustan era of our literature. The great poet who
wrote--
"Behold three thousand gentlemen at least,
Each safely mounted on his capering beast"--
what has become of that bard's inspired productions? They have gone
the way of Donne and Cowley and Waller and Denham, and nobody cares
very much.
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