Time has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually
recording illustrious names. But, as often as a new name is written
there, an old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated
characters, never to be effaced. These are the high nobility of
Nature,--Lords of the Public Domain of Thought. Posterity shall
never question their titles. But those, whose fame lives only in the
indiscreet opinion of unwise men, must soon be as well forgotten, as
if they had never been. To this great oblivion must most men come.
It is better, therefore, that they should soon make up their minds
to this; well knowing, that, as their bodies must ere long be
resolved into dust again, and their graves tell no tales of them; so
musttheir names likewise be utterly forgotten, and their most
cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions have no longer an
individual being among men; but be resolved and incorporated into
the universe of thought. If, then, the imagination can trace the
noble dust of heroes, till we find it stopping a beer-barrel, and
know that

"Imperial Cesar, dead and turned to clay,

May stop a hole to keep the wind away;"

not less can it trace the noble thoughts of great men, till it
finds them mouldered into the common dust of conversation, and used
to stop men's mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the flaws
of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular adages and wise
proverbs, which are now resolved into the common mass of thought;
their authors forgotten, and having no more an individual being