his hero, may we not say himself, when recovering from an illness. "In
the recollection and prospect of such woe," he asks, "Is it not lawful to
exclaim, 'Better that I had never been born'"? And he replies, "Fool,
for thyself thou wast not born, but to fulfil the inscrutable decrees of
thy Creator; and how dost thou know that this dark principle is not,
after all, thy best friend; that it is not that which tempers the whole
mass of thy corruption? It may be, for what thou knowest, the mother of
wisdom and of great works, it is the dread of the horror of the night
that makes the pilgrim hasten on his way. When thou feelest it nigh, let
thy safety word be 'Onward!' If thou tarry, thou art overwhelmed.
Courage! Build great works; 'tis urging thee."

In the passage just quoted Borrow speaks of God's "inscrutable" decrees.
After sitting as a young man at the feet of William Taylor and learning
from him some philosophy and much scepticism, he had come back to the old
Hebrew idea that in religion reverence was the beginning of wisdom. This
did not mean that he had discarded Western science, or put a bridle upon
his own insatiable curiosity. No man was more ready to learn what could
anyhow or anywhere be learned. It meant that when all had been learned
that science could teach, the really vital questions remained still
without an answer, because natural science can throw no light on what
nature itself really is. The only clue within our reach to that first
and last problem lay, in his judgment, with the simple-hearted and lowly-
minded, those in whom this wonderful world still aroused wonder. In thus
calling to the soul of man not to lose its power of wonder, Borrow is in
sympathy with the deepest thought of our time.

For ah! how surely,
How soon and surely will disenchantment come,
When first to herself she boasts to walk securely,
And drives the master spirit away from his home;
Seeing the marvellous things that make the morning
Are marvels of every day, familiar, and some
Have lost with use, like earthly robes, their adorning,
As earthly joys the charm of a first delight,
And some are fallen from awe to neglect and scorning. {12}

Let us say then with the ancient seer: "As for me, I would seek unto God;
which doeth great things and unsearchable, marvellous things without
number."

Footnotes:

{12} Robert Bridges, _Prometheus the Firegiver_, 824.

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