396 The Perplexities of a Book- Worm. 



controversy, that had hitherto excited me with its sarcasms, its vindic- 

 tiveness, and its subtleties, I no longer felt a charm. I discovered 

 failings and crimes equally balanced on all sides, and gave an equal 

 share of opprobrium to Fox's Martyrs and Butler's Saints ; I never 

 could find the happy mean where peace and truth sat guiding, and 

 informing, and consoling mankind. Even Massillon was a sectarian, 

 and Fenelon a visionary, and the amiable Newton a victim to his own 

 fallacies. History had already driven me into despair with its compilers. 

 They had all blasphemed facts. I could not find a feasible History of 

 St. Bartholomew's Massacre, or the Murders of Glencoe, or the Neapo- 

 litan Conspiracy it was all darkness, and contradiction, and personal 

 ire, and endless contention. History, as well as doctrine, was the work 

 of sectaries, and its records were equally stained with the impiety of 

 interested falsehood. I had read too much to be contented too little 

 to be convinced. In science, the maze was like the Cretan labyrinth ; 

 age after age had furnished fresh demonstrations, and discoveries, and 

 improvements ; and it would have taken a whole life to trace the pro- 

 gress, before you could come at its rudiment. I was lost in the war- 

 fare and strife, and stunned in the immitigable animosities of men who 

 betrayed that narrowness of vision which they were labouring to correct 

 in others. The knowledge of languages was a study to which I had 

 devoted much time, and serious thought, and ardent research. It had 

 beguiled me of many wearisome seasons, when, excluded from society, 

 I sat down to my task of isolated enjoyment ; every fresh reception of 

 sounds that conveyed new images, and novel modes of expression, was 

 a joy and a triumph ; I exulted in my lonely task it was a never-end- 

 ing source of gratification a fountain, whose waters were eternal. But 

 in the midst of these banquets and anticipations, I discovered that Sir 

 William Jones, the greatest linguist perhaps in the world, had mas- 

 tered the following languages : English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, 

 Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Reinic, Hebrew, 

 Bengalic, Hindi, Turkish, Tibetian, Pali, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, 

 Ethiopic, Coptic, Welch, Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese ! What could 

 I hope to acquire after this ? My life, wasted out to its last flicker, 

 would be an idle devotion I would be a learner on my death-bed ; and 

 so I abandoned my labour -pleasing and useful as I found it in dis- 

 satisfaction and anger, I was sated with civilians, who had wound me 

 in their complications until I lost the sense of decision ; theory after 

 theory institution after institution I found nothing perfect, and took 

 objections to all. I grew tired of the poets when the rush of curiosity 

 was over, and seldom went a second time to their feast of legends. 



But my temper had warped even from its original gloom. My library 

 was a tomb ; it was strewed over with books ; I entered it with a fore- 

 boding, as if it was fate that was pushing me on ,- and yet I had no 

 inclination to seek a change. But new books at last came ; modern, 

 cheerful-looking, and such as I had not met before : glittering with 

 tempting embellishments, and written with flippancy and eloquence. 

 In these I found a solace they banished the thickly-gathering de- 

 lirium for a while ; my brain, my soul, my very existence, was in my 

 new treasures ; I gloated over them in the dark pressed them 

 grasped them they were my interlocutors with the creation they 

 stood between me and the conventional usages of my race. I 

 found them animated by a knowledge such as I had been coveting and 

 despising I found that they had eclipsed all my speculations, and 



