ESSAYS 685 



wheels are run down, does not choose to write his memoirs or even to relate 

 reminiscences around the fireside, the broken soldier who never shoulders his 

 crutch, the barrister who never recalls his first brief. Two old men will haggle 

 with one another over the fixation of a date, they will pull up a conversation and 

 every one must wait on account of a forgotten name. 



In 1768 Fanny Burney made this entry in her Journal : " I cannot express the 

 pleasure I have in writing down my thoughts at the very moment . . . and I am 

 much deceived in my foresight if I shall not have very great delight in reading 

 this living proof of my manner of passing my time . . . there is something to me 

 very unsatisfactory in passing year after year without even a memorandum of 

 what you did, etc." This is the true spirit of the habitual diarist speaking. At 

 heart, every one is a diarist. There is no child who has not kept a diary at some 

 time or another, and there is no one who, having given it up, has not regretted it 

 later on. The confirmed journal writer, however, possesses a psychology not 

 altogether common, being one of those few persons who truly appraise the beauty, 

 interest, and value of the present without having to wait until memory has lent the 

 past its chromatic fringes. 



It is strange that so many gallant knights clad in the armour of steely de- 

 termination should fight on unthinking against such overwhelming odds. For the 

 conservators, in trying to dam back time, in resisting change and decay, wrestle 

 with the stars in their courses and dispute the very constitution of the universe. 

 But the imperative instinct must be obeyed. The ominous warnings of Sir 

 Thomas Browne are unavailing. " There is no antidote for the opium of time." 

 " Gravestones tell truth but a year." " We might just as well be content with 

 six feet as with the moles of Adrianus." And " to subsist but in bones, and be but 

 pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration." To erect a monument is like trying 

 to insert a stick into the bed of the Niagara. No memorial as large and wonderful 

 as the Taj Mahal can stay the passage of a grief, no pen can preserve an emotion 

 held for a while in the sweet shackles of a sonnet's rules. Neither pen nor brush 

 nor chisel knows the art of perpetuation. 



As the torrent races past, frantic hands stretch out to snatch some memento 

 from the flood — a faded letter, an old concert programme, a bullet, the railway 

 labels jealously preserved on travellers' portmanteaux, a lock of hair. " Only a 

 woman's hair," said Swift in the bitterness of his heart as he handled Stella's 

 tress. 



There are some things we can never hope to recall, even so long as the world 

 lasts, except by divination or Black Magic. The hopeless science of Palaeontology 

 offers its students no tiniest ray of comfort — a Pterodactyl, a Dinosaur, or an 

 Archaeopteryx will never be disclosed to us in the flesh. There are many things 

 lost for ever : Who was the Man in the Iron Mask ? or Junius ? or Mr. W. H. ? — 

 Louvain ? 



"All is vanity, feeding the wind and folly. Mummy is become merchandise, 

 Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams " — to borrow once more 

 from Sir Thomas Browne's organ music. 



" Tarry awhile, lean earth ! 

 Rabble of Pharaohs and Arsacidse 



Keep their cold court within thee ; thou hast sucked down 

 How many Ninevehs and Hecatompyloi 

 And perished cities whose great phantasmata 

 O'erbrow the silent citizens of Dis." 



