"Beneath the umbrage deep
That shades the silent world of memory."
Shall we live? or "like beasts and common people die?" There is something harsh and grating in the collocation of these words of the "Melancholy Cowley;" yet he meant no harm, for he was a kind, good creature as ever was born, and a true genius. He there has expressed concisely, but too abruptly, the mere fact of their falling alike and together into oblivion. Far better Gray's exquisite words,
"On some fond breast the parting soul relies!"
The reliance is firm and sure; the "fond breast" is faithful to its trust, and dying, transmits it to another; till after two or three transmissions—holy all, but fainter and dimmer—the pious tradition dies, and all memorial of the love and the delight, the pity and the sorrow, is swallowed up in vacant night.
Posthumous Fame! Proud words—yet may they be uttered in a humble spirit. The common lot of man is, after death—oblivion. Yet genius, however small its sphere, if conversant with the conditions of the human heart, may vivify with indestructible life some happy delineations, that shall continue to be held dear by successive sorrowers in this vale of tears. If the name of the delineator continue to have something sacred in its sound—obscure to the many as it may be, or non-existent—the hope of such posthumous fame is sufficient to one who overrates not his own endowments. And as the hope has its root in love and sympathy, he who by his writings has inspired towards himself when in life, some of these feelings in the hearts of not a few who never saw his face, seems to be justified in believing that even after final obliteration of Hic jacet from his tombstone, his memory will be regarded with something of the same affection in his Remains.