Note 1515 — AN ESSAY ON MAN, IN FOUR EPISTLES (continued 3)
Reading edition
The men of renown,—the Shakespeares, Bacons, and Newtons,—can never be "empty shades" while we have the works which were the fruit of their prodigious intellects. When the wealth of a great mind is preserved to posterity we possess a principal part of the man, and if in the next world he takes no cognisance of his fame in this, it is we that are the empty shades to him; he is a substance and a power to us.