1,085. Obscurity; Writing; Vanity "No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library; for who can see the wall crowded on every side by mighty volumes, the works of laborious meditations and accurate inquiry, now scarcely known but by the catalogue..." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,086. Fashion; Mediocrity; Obscurity; Op-Ed; Writing "Of the innumerable authors whose performances are thus treasured up in magnificent obscurity [in a library], most are forgotten, because they never deserved to be remembered, and owed the honours which they once obtained, not to judgment or to genius, to labour or to art, but to the prejudice of faction, the strategems of intrigue, or the servility of adulation. Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,087. Mediocrity; Obscurity "Nothing is more common than to find men, whose works are now totally neglected, mentioned with praises by their contemporaries as the oracles of their age, and the legislators of science. Curiosity is naturally excited, their volumes after long inquiry are found, but seldom reward the labour of the search. Every period of time has produced these bubbles of artificial fame, which are kept up a while by the breath of fashion, and then break at once, and are annihilated." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,089. Factions; Obscurity; Op-Ed; Politics; Reading "He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised. Many of the performances which had power to inflame factions, and fill a kingdom with confusion, have now very little effect upon a frigid critic; and the time is coming when the compositions of later hirelings shall lie equally despised. In proportion as those who write on temporary subjects are exalted above their merit at first, they are afterwards depressed below it; nor can the brightest elegance of diction, or most artful subtilty of reasoning, hope for much esteem from those whose regard is no longer quickened by curiosity or pride." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,090. Obscurity; Op-Ed "It is indeed the fate of controvertists, even when they contend for philosophical or theological truth, to be soon laid aside and slighted. Either the question is decided, and there is no more place for doubt and opposition; or mankind despair of understanding it, and grow weary of disturbance, content themselves with quiet ignorance, and refuse to be harassed with labours which they have no hope of recompensing with knowledge." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,091. Obscurity; Progress "When any tenet is generally received and adopted as an incontrovertible principle, we seldom look back to the arguments upon which it was first established, or can bear that tediousness of deduction, and multiplicity of evidence, by which its author was forced to reconcile it to prejudice, and fortify it in the weakness of novelty against obstinacy and envy. It is well know how much of our philosophy is derived from Boyle's discovery of the qualities of the air; yet of those who now adopt or enlarge his theory, very few have read the detail of his experiments. His name is, indeed, reverenced; but his works are neglected." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,092. Obscurity; Progress "Some writers apply themselves to studies boundless and inexhaustible, as experiments and natural philosophy. These are always lost in successive compilations as new advances are made, and former observations become familiar. Others spend their lives in remarks on language, or explanations of antiquities, and only afford materials for lexicographers and commentators, who are themselves overwhelmed by subsequent collectors, that equally destroy the memory of their predecessors by amplification, transposition, or contraction. Every new system of nature gives birth to a swarm of expositors, whose business is to explain and illustrate it, and who can hope to exist no longer than the founder of their sect preserves his reputation." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,093. Fame; Obscurity; Writing "There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame." Johnson: Rambler #106 (March 23, 1751) Link 1,236. Fame; Obscurity "It is long before we are convinced of the small proportion which every individual bears to the collective body of mankind; or learn how few can be interested in the fortune of any single man; how little vacancy is left in the world for any new object of attention; to how small extent the brightest blaze of merit can be spread amidst the mists of business and folly; and how soon it is clouded by the intervention of other novelties." Johnson: Rambler #146 (August 10, 1751) Link 1,238. Fame; Obscurity "He that is pushing his predecessors into the gulf of obscurity, cannot but sometimes suspect, that he must himself sink in like manner, and, as he stands upon the same precipice, be swept away with the same violence." Johnson: Rambler #146 (August 10, 1751) Link 1,525. Obscurity; Writing "It often happens that an author's reputation is endangered in succeeding times, by that which raised the loudest applause among his contemporaries: nothing is read with greater pleasure than allusions to recent facts, reigning opinions, or present controversies; but when facts are forgotten, and controversies extinguished, these favorite touches lose all their graces; and the author in his descent to posterity must be left to the mercy of chance, without any power of ascertaining the memory of those things, to which he owed his luckiest thoughts and his kindest reception." Johnson: Adventurer #58 (May 25, 1753) Link 1,748. Fame; Obscurity "Of many writers who fill their age with wonder, and whose names we find celebrated in the books of their contemporaries, the works are now no longer to be seen, or are seen only among the lumber of libraries which are seldom visited, where they lie only to shew the deceitfulness of hope, and the uncertainty of honour." Johnson: Idler #59 (June 2, 1759) Link 1,749. Fame; Obscurity "Of the decline of reputation many cause nay be assigned. It is commonly lost because it never was deserved; and was conferred at first, not by the suffrages of criticism, but by the fondness of friendship, or servility of flattery. The great and popular are very freely applauded; but all soon grow weary of echoing to each other a name which has no other claim to notice, but that many mouths are pronouncing it at once." Johnson: Idler #59 (June 2, 1759) Link