Lost to Posterity

Enter any good old-fashioned library that has had the rare luck to escape fire, the auction-room, and the waste-paper store. In long rows are the works of the 20 or 30 great divines, the delight and the support of their respective generations. Of most of these good men, so great in their day, it is now rare to find anybody who has read even a page, or can so much as say what manner of men they were, or what were their distinctive opinions, or where they preached or wrote, or where they lived and died. Over every library, even such as those now annually scattered, volume by volume, over all lands, may be written the warning not to work for posterity, but for the present day, and for those that share it with us.

From the Times of London, August 12 1890, on the occasion of the death of Cardinal Newman