COMPARISONS IN FAME.

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 276, 22 November 1927, Page 6

COMPARISONS IN FAME.

The old question about the advantage which one man, or profession, has over another in the title to enduring fame has recently been threshed over again in the English Press. What started the discussion remark which John Bright made to Mr. Morley when the latter went"to consult him about the biography of his former close friend and colleague, Richard Cobden. With a touch of melancholy in his voice, as he was recalling the past, Mr. Bright said: "How short is the fame of a public man compared with that of a writer!" He went on to cite the instance of Sir Robert Peel, who for many years filled an immense space in English life, but who had since sunk into semi-oblivion, with no written works to follow him and keep his memory alive. The case seems hardly conclusive. Sir Robert Peel will live long in the biographies of other statesmen, and his famous saying about making the bread of the working man sweeter because untaxed is still as often quoted as any excerpt from writers contemporary with him. Besides, he gave the name "peeler" to the London police, which will long carry remembrance of him. All such comparisons, if not odious, have an air of futility about them. The different categories are not sharply defined. An example can always be dragged out of one class t° confute the arguments of those who champion the other. Perhaps Disraeli struck close to the secret of the business when he said that a statesman who is also a literary man carries a double-edged weapon. Even with that, there can be no certainty of' cleaving a way to the lasting homage. of posterity. A writer-statesman may not, when passing from earth, be any more sure than a poet that his name is not writ in water- And either the. statesmanship or the literature will be superior in the memory of men who come after; both seldom advance with equal regard.