A LETTER FROM POSTERITY TO THE PRESENT AGE.

I know not with what indulgence or resentment you, who are the reigning sovereign, may receive advice from your intended successor, but since your actions may tend to my advantage or trouble, I conceive myself entitled to declare my opinion of your conduct.

Though I have received many messages and injunctions from you, I have never before attempted an answer; and indeed the Present Age has hitherto always supposed itself secure from the reproaches of Posterity, and has been able to boast of its benefits to future times without fear of contradiction. You know that during your life I am confined to an island remote from your territories, and I have till now forborne from writing to you, because I have been told that no ship from this island could reach you. Having, however, found at last an expedient, by which, perhaps, a messenger may arrive at your court, I have resolved to send you a few observations, though without any absolute certainty that you will ever read them.

Although the seas between us are acknowledged impassable to a ship from my country, you have imagined them safe and easy to those which sail in the contrary direction, and leave your dominions for my island. But in this you are greatly mistaken; for of the innumerable ambassadors, whom you despatch to me, a few only arrive, and from them I receive a melancholy narrative of multitudes perishing by the rocks and other perils of the voyage. And besides the natural toil and danger of these seas, I learn that many of your messengers are lost by want of preparation and skill, by ignorance of the sea, and by faulty ships. It is said that some of your packets founder as soon as they have left the harbour, many in the middle of the voyage, and some within sight of my island. The ruins and fragments cast up on my shore from time to time inform me how many expeditions you fit out for destruction.

However, I have learned something of you from the few more skilful adventurers who have accomplished the voyage; and as from their information I find that you are imposing duties upon me, for which I am not likely to have either time or inclination, I shall make a few remarks upon these labours, which you think yourself entitled to leave for me.

In many particulars, I believe you only fall into that mistake, common to every age, of expecting too much observance from your successor; but in addition to that, you may perhaps have other errors of your own invention. I understand that upon the most trifling event you please yourself with considering what posterity will say about it. Now, while I gratefully acknowledge the care you take to supply me with conversation, I would represent to you that you can hardly expect me to decline all enterprises and employments for the sake of having full leisure to talk of what you have been doing. You seem to think it but reasonable, that when you are dead I shall be occupied incessantly with considering your exploits, and celebrating your praises; but you forget that I shall always have my own exploits to consider, and myself to praise. It is impossible that I should undertake in your behalf all the study and research which you impose upon me without neglecting altogether my own affairs, my hopes and dangers, and that only in order to make you famous. This, I think, cannot be expected; for although men will endure great labours for their own renown, no person has been known to forfeit his ease, pleasure, and reputation for the fame of another.

I am told that you expect me to understand the affairs of your reign much better than you do yourself. I am to discover infallibly the nature of every event, to expose the fraud of every intrigue, and to manifest the true origin of all that now passes before your eyes.

When there has been some mysterious transaction, in which there is guilt and blame without any certainty of the person upon whom it ought to fall, you desire your subjects to be under no concern, and not to perplex themselves with conjectures, for Posterity will inquire into the matter, and disgrace those who deserve it. Yet I should have thought you must have better opportunities of information about what is now passing than I am likely to command when all concerned in the event are dead. But I believe the advantage which makes Posterity infallible is, that none remain to contradict whatever he may choose to conclude. But before you can be sure I shall arrive at just decisions upon all events in your reign, you must know whether I shall be at the trouble of examining them at all; and I cannot help suspecting that I shall be more attentive to the most trivial occurrence which I see passing than to all the events which were seen by you.

I have learned, also, that you act with the most wanton caprice in distributing honours and rewards amongst your subjects. The clamorous become great; the good, the silent, and the useful remain obscure: and it is said that to excuse the little pains you take in discovering and advancing true merit, you often allege that Posterity will rectify all your mistakes concerning the characters of men. This seems to me a singular kind of justice; and I cannot think that a man of merit is adequately rewarded by the hope of its being acknowledged after his death that he ought to have been famous while he lived. But I warn you that I shall not think myself under any obligation to adjust the claims of your contemporaries. This is one of the most unreasonable tasks that you impose upon me; you find it difficult to distinguish the good and bad qualities in that multitude which is soliciting your notice, and therefore transfer the decision to me, as if the characters of men were most easily discerned when the means of information are lost. I am expected not only to furnish honour for all whom you have unjustly kept in obscurity, but also to degrade those whom you have exalted without reason, and you seem to think that you atone sufficiently for raising so many undeserving men when you charge Posterity to deprive them of their honours.

I am told that by this uncertainty in assigning honours, and this custom of referring all kinds of merit to my decision, you have taught great numbers of busy men, whose names can never reach my ear, to expect what they call justice from me. When there have been two competitors for a public honour, the unsuccessful one invokes my aid, and desires that I will not fail to expose the arts of his adversary and to manifest his own probity, when the truth is, that I am never to hear of the dispute, and therefore cannot reasonably be expected to settle it. I find that I am become the common refuge of all the unhappy men who are disappointed in their hopes of your favour. He who was to have been an orator and statesman, but instead of that dies unheard of in a wretched garret, entreats me with his last breath to make him as great a man as he ought to have been.

But I hear that of all those who expect my praise the most numerous and most confident are the authors. The scribbler, who has been guilty of a tiresome volume which you have refused to read, still writes with the same industry as at first, for he has patience, and can wait for the applause of Posterity. He who has had the good fortune to be read and commended by you has no reason to suppose that I shall be less pleased by his work; and he whom you have censured or refused to read is but the more confident of my applause from your known neglect of merit. Thus either to fail or to succeed assures an author of favour with Posterity, whence I must regard with despair the library that I am expected to peruse.

It is said that almost all your subjects are authors, so that he who has not written a book is accused of affecting singularity; and I hear you read the living writers with so much industry that very few complain of being overlooked. Now I am credibly informed that there is only one writer of your whole reign whom I am likely to study: I conceal his name, that each may believe it to be himself, and the vigour and hope of your authors may not be diminished.

But I must inform all of your contemporaries who, either from their writings or their actions, are confident of my future praise, that when I come to the throne, a man of but moderate abilities, provided he be alive, will engage more of my notice and conversation than the most renowned of your dead subjects.

But my neglect is not the only thing which these ambitious men have to fear; the loss of their names and actions at sea being a still greater impediment to immortal fame. Every one of your authors, as I have been told, sends his works to sea in full confidence that they will reach my island and be eagerly studied by me. Many even undertake to foretell my impression and opinion from particular passages. These books, from which I am to obtain my knowledge, usually attain the bottom of the sea almost as soon as they set out.

I hear that you are very punctual in transmitting to me intelligence of all you do, and that when you are doing nothing you take care to inform me of that also, and despatch a copious narrative of every day, whether any thing has happened in it or not. I have already told you the fate of these valuable communications; they are lost by the storms and rocks. But from time to time a man is born in your dominions with a genius to overcome all the difficulties that separate us. He is versed in the characters and events of your reign, and also knows my disposition, what things I wish to know, and what I should reject, and he has skill to preserve him from being destroyed and forgotten in the seas through which I am to be reached. Such a man from the rocks in his way gathers the fragments of letters that you have sent by unfortunate voyagers, and judges what intelligence is worthy to reach my island. From these rare adventurers I obtain all the knowledge I have of your reign.

There are, indeed, many divers in my island, who pretend to give ample and exact information of you, but they find little belief. These artists, by constant discipline, have extraordinary skill and patience in remaining under water, where, as they wish me to suppose, they discover innumerable histories from your lost ships, which they read with great diligence beneath the waves, and then rising up write what they have learned, and present it to me. The writers who thus look for facts at the bottom of the sea are very apt to contradict the most authentic intelligence that I have received from your ablest ambassadors; but I give very little attention to their discoveries.

As I have now explained to you how rare and imperfect is the information that I receive of your reign, you may understand that your claim to my incessant praise and study is not likely to be complied with.

But whatever intelligence of your proceedings you may contrive to give me, I cannot promise that laborious attention to them which you require; and I think you the more unreasonable in demanding so much of my admiration, because, as I am told, you show no such respect for your predecessor, but are wholly occupied by your own projects. It is said that you never speak of him without derision; and that any person who would recall one of his maxims is ruined in your esteem, and ridiculed by all your court as a man of an understanding too slow to go on with the course of the seasons. Now, if you think that an Age deceased is thus at the mercy of its successor, I cannot understand what peculiar merit in you is to secure you from the same treatment during my reign. I am told, that in your eyes the chief virtue of all things consists in being new. A book just from the press has wit and spirit, which after a short time are not to be found in it. I understand that a volume six months old is thought to have lost all its vigour. Men, also, as books, attain with you a sudden eminence, but soon discover that their renown has left them with their novelty.

If my intelligence is accurate, you estimate opinions by the same rule. A man who would be thought to reason justly must insist upon something which never was imagined before: in all matters relating to the government of your dominions you disdain to think any thing that was thought twenty years ago; and indeed I believe that by your command, the same thing very seldom is true for two years together. And it seems that whenever you order your subjects to do or think any thing new, you imagine yourself conferring a great benefit on me, for instead of regarding your various decrees as the amusements of a day, you believe that your wildest fancies will last for ever. In all your inventions you are dreaming for Posterity, and every absurdity you commit is for my use.

I find you have invented a new phrase, "the spirit of the age," said to be of admirable use in silencing those men of immovable minds, who obstinately retain a maxim because they remember it true at a former time. In every dispute, as I hear, this phrase is both wit and argument; no man is able to refute it, nor even to reason against it for a moment; and if an intrepid disputant sometimes ventures to call its authority in question, he acts on pain of being ridiculous for the rest of his life.

Now, since every doctrine must wait for your permission before it can be true, since you have assumed this right to reject every past notion, and supply from your own stock all the wisdom that your people want, I wish to be informed what shall prevent me from being equally absolute in my turn.

I advise you, then, to give up the frivolous amusement of making discoveries for my use; I intend to make discoveries for myself, and believe I shall follow your example in liking my own truths best, for the sake of their author. But, while I desire you to forbear recommending opinions to me, I would not discourage you from prosecuting your triumph over the defenceless notions of antiquity; for a living disputant has so great an advantage over one who is dead, that in any controversy with your predecessor I think you cannot fail to be victorious. Only remember, that when you are dead I shall argue against you with the same advantage; and I know not how you can expect that, having your example before me, I should use that advantage with moderation.