Surely the irony of
fate was never better shown. Even this Titan would have had only a
bubble reputation but for the lucky accident which brought that
obscure Scotch laird to London.
Most piteous is the story of the poor souls who have sought to achieve
their share of immortality by literature. Go to our noble Museum and
look at the appalling expanse of books piled up yard upon yard to the
ceiling of the immense dome. Tons upon tons--Pelion on Ossa--of
literature meet the eye and stun the imagination. Every book was
wrought out by eager labour of some hopeful mortal; joy, anguish,
despair, mad ambition, placid assurance, wild conceit, proud courage
once possessed the breasts of those myriad writers, according to their
several dispositions. The piles rest in stately silence, and the
reputations of the authors are entombed.
As for the fighters who sought the bubble reputation even at the
cannon's mouth, who recks of their fierce struggles, their bitter
wounds, their brief success? Who knows the leaders of the superb host
that poured like a torrent from Torres Vedras to the Pyrenees, and
smote Napoleon to the earth? Who can name the leaders of the doomed
host that crossed the Beresina, and left their bones under the Russian
snows? High of heart the soldiers were when they set out on their wild
pilgrimage under their terrible leader, but soon they were lying by
thousands on the red field of Borodino, and the sound of their moaning
filled the night like the calling of some mighty ocean.
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