posterity that took any interest in him the indefatigable Lowndes! Well,
even a bibliographic indemnity for contemporary neglect, to have so
much as your title-page read after it is a century old, and to enjoy a
posthumous public of one, is better than nothing.

A volume like Mr. Allibone's--so largely a hospital for incurable
forgottenhoods--is better than any course of philosophy to the young
author. Let him reckon how many of the ten thousand or so names here
recorded he has ever heard of before, let him make this myriad the
denominator of a fraction to which the dozen perennial fames shall
be the numerator, and he will find that his dividend of a chance at
escaping speedy extinction is not worth making himself unhappy about.
Should some statistician make such a book the basis for constructing the
tables of a fame-insurance company, the rates at which alone policies
could be safely issued would put them beyond the reach of all except
those who did not need them. After all, perhaps, the next best thing to
being famous or infamous is to be utterly forgotten; for that, at least,
is to accomplish a decisive result by living. To hang on the perilous
edge of immortality by the nails, liable at any moment to drop into the
waters of Oblivion, is at best a questionable beatitude.

But if a dictionary of this kind give rise to some melancholy
reflections, it is not without suggestions of a more soothing character.
We are reminded by it of the tender-heartedness of Chaucer, who, in the
"House of Fame," after speaking of Orpheus and Arion, (Mr. Tyrwhitt
calls him Orion,) and Cheiron and Glasgerion, has a kind word for the
lesser minstrels that play on pipes made of straw,--

"Such as have the little herd-groomes
That keepen beastes in the broomes."