He looks back
and beholds the early authors of his country, once the favorites of
their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ages have covered
them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished by the
quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be the
fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day, and
held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow
antiquated and obsolete; until it shall become almost as
unintelligible in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of
those Runic inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. I
declare," added I, with some emotion, "when I contemplate a modern
library, filled with new works, in all the bravery of rich gilding and
binding, I feel disposed to sit down and weep; like the good Xerxes,
when he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military
array, and reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would
be in existence!"
* Holinshed, in his Chronicle, observes, "afterwards, also, by
diligent travell of Geffry Chaucer and of John Gowre, in the time of
Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate,
monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an excellent passe,
notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until
the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum,
John Fox, and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully
accomplished the ornature of the same, to their great praise and
immortal commendation.
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