What
a Magnus Apollo, for instance, will Moore become, among sober divines
and dusty schoolmen! Even his festive and amatory songs, which are now
the mere quickeners of our social moments, or the delights of our
drawing-rooms, will then become matters of laborious research and
painful collation. How many a grave professor will then waste his
midnight oil, or worry his brain through a long morning, endeavouring
to restore the pure text, or illustrate the biographical hints of
"Come, tell me, says Rosa, as kissing and kissed;" and how many an
arid old bookworm, like the worthy little parson, will give up in
despair, after vainly striving to fill up some fatal hiatus in "Fanny
of Timmol"!
Nor is it merely such exquisite authors as Moore that are doomed to
consume the oil of future antiquaries. Many a poor scribbler, who is
now, apparently, sent to oblivion by pastrycooks and cheese-mongers,
will then rise again in fragments, and flourish in learned
immortality.
After all, thought I, time is not such an invariable destroyer as he
is represented. If he pulls down, he likewise builds up; if he
impoverishes one, he enriches another; his very dilapidations furnish
matter for new works of controversy, and his rust is more precious
than the most costly gilding.
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