Our fathers find their graves in our short
memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.
Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generations pass while some
trees stand, and old families last not three oaks....The iniquity[130]
of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of
men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the
founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives, that burnt the temple of
Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of
Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our
felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal
durations and Thersites[131] is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who
knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more
remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the known
account of time? Without the favor of the everlasting register, the
first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methusaleh's long life
had been his only chronicle.
Oblivion is not to be hired.[132] The greater part must be content to be
as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in
the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the
reported names ever since contain not one living century.
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