Is there one of my Readers in a thousand who knows that Philistes was a Greco-Phœnician, or Phœnico-Grecian Queen of Malta and Gozo, before the Carthaginians obtained the dominion of those islands, in which their language continues living, though corrupted, to this day?—Are there ten men in Cornwall who know that Medacritus was the name of the first man who carried tin from that part of the world?
What but his name is now known of Romanianus, who in St. Augustin's opinion was the greatest genius that ever lived; and how little is his very name known now! What is now remembered “of the men of renown before the Flood?” Sir Walter Raleigh hath a chapter concerning them, wherein he says, “of the war, peace, government and policy of these strong and mighty men, so able both in body and wit, there is no memory remaining; whose stories if they had been preserved, and what else was then performed in that newness of the world, there could nothing of more delight have been left to posterity. For the exceeding long lives of men, (who to their strength of body and natural wits had the experience added of eight and nine hundred years,) how much of necessity must the same add of wisdom and understanding? Likely it is that their works excelled all whatsoever can be told of after-times; especially in respect of this old age of the world, when we no sooner begin to know than we begin to die: according to Hippocrates, Vita brevis, ars longa, tempus præceps, which is, life is short, art is long, and time is headlong. And that those people of the first age performed many things worthy of admiration, it may be gathered out of these words of Moses, these were mighty men, which in old time were men of renown.” What is known of them now? Their very names have perished!
Who now can explain the difference between the Agenorian, the Eratoclean, the Epigonian, and the Damonian sects of musicians, or knows any thing more than the names of their respective founders, except that one of them was Socrates's music-master?
What Roman of the age of Horace would have believed that a contemporaneous Consul's name should only live to posterity, as a record of the date of some one of the Poet's odes?
Who now remembers that memorable Mr. Clinch, “whose single voice, as he had learned to manage it, could admirably represent a number of persons at sport, and in hunting, and the very dogs and other animals,”—himself a whole pack and a whole field in full cry: “but none better than a quire of choristers chanting an Anthem”—himself a whole quire.
“How subdued,” says Mr. David Laing, who has rescued from oblivion so much that is worthy of being held in remembrance,—“how subdued is the interest that attaches to a mere name, as for instance, to that of Dunbar's contemporaries, Stobo, Quintyne, or St. John the Ross, whose works have perished!”
Who was that famous singer nick-named Bonny Boots, who, because of his excellent voice, or as Sir John Hawkins says, “for some other reason, had permission to call Queen Elizabeth his Lady:” and of whom it is said in the canzonet,
Our Bonny Boots could toot it,
Yea and foot it,
Say lusty lads, who now shall Bonny-Boot it?
Sir John thinks it might “possibly be one Mr. Hale.” But what is Fame when it ends in a poor possibility that Bonny Boots who called the Queen his Lady, and that Queen, not Bergami's popular Queen, but Queen Elizabeth, the nation's glorious Queen Elizabeth, the people's good Queen Bess,—what, I repeat, is Fame, when it ends in a mere conjecture that the Bonny Boots who was permitted to call such a Queen his Lady, might be “one Hale or Hales in whose voice she took some pleasure.” Well might Southey say
Fame's loudest blast upon the ear of Time
Leaves but a dying echo!