Falkland | Page 4

was thrown utterly upon my own resources. I
wandered by day over the rude scenes which surrounded us; and at
evening I pored, with an unwearied delight, over the ancient legends
which made those scenes sacred to my imagination. I grew by degrees
of a more thoughtful and visionary nature. My temper imbibed the
romance of my studies; and whether, in winter, basking by the large
hearth of our old hall, or stretched, in the indolent voluptuousness of
summer, by the rushing streams which formed the chief characteristic
of the country around us, my hours were equally wasted in those dim
and luxurious dreams, which constituted, perhaps, the essence of that
poetry I had not the genius to embody. It was then, by that alternate
restlessness of action and idleness of reflection, into which my young
years were divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that
fitfulness of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me
through life. Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me
as tame, but even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither
novelty nor zest. I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have
made that my daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have

been poison to others; I have rendered my mind unable to enjoy the
ordinary aliments of nature; and I have wasted, by a premature
indulgence, my resources and my powers, till I have left my heart,
without a remedy or a hope, to whatever disorders its own
intemperance has engendered.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
When I left Dr. -----'s, I was sent to a private tutor in D-----e. Here I
continued for about two years. It was during that time that--but what
then befell me is for no living ear! The characters of that history are
engraven on my heart in letters of fire; but it is a language that none but
myself have the authority to read. It is enough for the purpose of my
confessions that the events of that period were connected with the first
awakening of the most powerful of human passions, and that, whatever
their commencement, their end was despair! and she--the object of that
love--the only being in the world who ever possessed the secret and the
spell of my nature--her life was the bitterness and the fever of a
troubled heart,--her rest is the grave
Non la conobbe il mondo mentre l'ebbe Con ibill'io, ch'a pianger qui
rimasi.
That attachment was not so much a single event, as the first link in a
long chain which was coiled around my heart. It were a tedious and
bitter history, even were it permitted, to tell you of all the sins and
misfortunes to which in afterlife that passion was connected. I will only
speak of the more hidden but general effect it had upon my mind;
though, indeed, naturally inclined to a morbid and melancholy
philosophy, it is more than probable, but for that occurrence, that it
would never have found matter for excitement. Thrown early among
mankind, I should early have imbibed their feelings, and grown like
them by the influence of custom. I should not have carried within the
one unceasing remembrance, which was to teach me, like Faustus, to
find nothing in knowledge but its inutility, or in hope but its deceit; and
to bear like him, through the blessings of youth and the allurements of

pleasure, the curse and the presence of a fiend.

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
It was after the first violent grief produced by that train of
circumstances to which I must necessarily so darkly allude, that I began
to apply with earnestness to books. Night and day I devoted myself
unceasingly to study, and from this fit I was only recovered by the long
and dangerous illness it produced. Alas! there is no fool like him who
wishes for knowledge! It is only through woe that we are taught to
reflect, and we gather the honey of worldly wisdom, not from flowers,
but thorns.
"Une grande passion malheureuse est un grand moyen de sagesse."
From the moment in which the buoyancy of my spirit was first broken
by real anguish, the losses of the heart were repaired by the experience
of the mind. I passed at once, like Melmoth, from youth to age. What
were any longer to me the ordinary avocations of my contemporaries? I
had exhausted years in moments--I had wasted, like the Eastern Queen,
my richest jewel in a draught. I ceased to hope, to feel, to act, to burn;
such are the impulses of the young! I learned to doubt, to reason, to
analyse: such are the habits of the old! From that time, if I have not
avoided the