This essay was one of a series called Common-places (No. III.) and appeared in The Examiner on November 27, 1814, before the Round Table series commenced. It was not, therefore, addressed, as it purports to be, ‘to the editor of the “Round Table.”’ The greater part of it was repeated in the Lectures on the English Poets (1818) at the end of Lecture V. on Thomson and Cowper.
PAGE [17]. Rousseau in his ‘Confessions.’ Partie I. Livre III. [18]. The minstrel. See Beattie’s Minstrel, Book I. st. 9. [20]. ‘A farewell sweet.’
‘If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet,
Extend his evening beam,’ etc.
Paradise Lost, II. 492.
ON POSTHUMOUS FAME
This essay is not one of the Round Table series. It appeared in The Examiner on May 22, 1814.
PAGE [22]. ‘Blessings be with them’ etc. Wordsworth’s Personal Talk, stanza 4. ‘Nor sometimes forget,’ etc. Paradise Lost, III. 33 et seq. Note. A part of the passage here referred to (from The Reason of Church Government urged against Prelacy) is quoted by Hazlitt in his Lectures on the English Poets (on Shakspeare and Milton). [23]. ‘Famous poets’ wit.’ See The Faerie Queene, Verses addressed by the author, No. 2. ‘Have not the poems of Homer,’ etc. The Advancement of Learning, First Book, VIII. 6. ‘Because on Earth,’ etc. See Dante’s Inferno, Canto iv. Cf. ‘On Fames eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled.’ The Faerie Queene, Book IV. Canto ii. st. 32. ‘Every variety of untried being.’
‘Through what variety of untried being,
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!’