The gold coins with the head of Alexander the
Great are some of them so fresh one might think they were newer than much
of the silver currency we were lately handling. As we have been quoting
from the poets this morning, I will follow the precedent, and give some
lines from an epistle of Pope to Addison after the latter had written,
but not yet published, his Dialogue on Medals. Some of these lines have
been lingering in my memory for a great many years, but I looked at the
original the other day and was so pleased with them that I got them by
heart. I think you will say they are singularly pointed and elegant.
"Ambition sighed; she found it vain to trust
The faithless column and the crumbling bust;
Huge moles, whose shadows stretched from shore to shore,
Their ruins perished, and their place no more!
Convinced, she now contracts her vast design,
And all her triumphs shrink into a coin.
A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps,
Beneath her palm here sad Judaea weeps;
Now scantier limits the proud arch confine,
And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine;
A small Euphrates through the piece is rolled,
And little eagles wave their wings in gold."
It is the same thing in literature. Write half a dozen folios full of
other people's ideas (as all folios are pretty sure to be), and you serve
as ballast to the lower shelves of a library, about as like to be
disturbed as the kentledge in the hold of a ship.
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