664 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
reaches the very moment of t his final dying enlightenment and 
confession, is a blind flight no-whither through the blue, God 
has no need to waste any hail or fire-balls on the case. Para¬ 
celsus is left to himself, and he does not arrive, except, indeed, 
at the very last moment, at the insight that another man ought 
to be formed to take his place/ 7 
This is surely not what the poet meant to convey. Paracel¬ 
sus fails, it is time; but he is a heroic soul, contrasted with the 
quietist Festus, who never fails, because he never aspires, and 
who therefore finds it so difficult to understand the last words of 
his friend. Festus asks 
And can it be, 
Dear Aureole, you have then found out at last 
That worldly things are utter vanity? 
That man is made for weakness, and should wait 
In patient ignorance, till God appoint. . . . 
And again 
But all comes 
To the same thing. ’Tis fruitless for mankind 
To fret themselves with what concerns them not; 
They are no use that way: they should lie down 
Content as God has made them, nor go mad 
In thriveless cares to better what is ill. 
Paracelsus emphatically repudiates this suggestion; and his 
own pronouncement upon his career, in the enlightenment of 
approaching death, is undoubtedly what we are intended to 
take as the poet’s final verdict. “Inscrutable 77 a& it appears to 
Festus, Paracelsus looks back to his early aspirations as “that 
happy time, 77 and his one regret is that he ceased to follow 
them. His one real failure was when he determined not to be 
balked ! j 
Of the meanest earthliest sensualest delight 
That may be snatched; for every joy is gain, 
And gain is gain, however small. 
He has made mistakes; he has sinned; and it is natural that his 
contemporaries should fasten upon his shortcomings; but that 
will not be the verdict of posterity. 
As yet men cannot do without contempt; 
’Tis for their good, and therefore fit awhile 
That they reject the weak, and scorn the false, 
Rather than praise the strong and true in me: 
But after, they will know me. 
