who has
followed me through the last chapter. "What is truth?" I had involved
myself imperceptibly in a dreary labyrinth of doubt, and, whichever way I
turned, no reasonable prospect of extricating myself appeared. The means
by which I had brought myself into this situation may be very briefly
told; I had inquired into many matters, in order that I might become
wise, and I had read and pondered over the words of the wise, so called,
till I had made myself master of the sum of human wisdom; namely, that
everything is enigmatical and that man is an enigma to himself; thence
the cry of "What is truth?" I had ceased to believe in the truth of that
in which I had hitherto trusted, and yet could find nothing in which I
could put any fixed or deliberate belief. I was, indeed, in a labyrinth!
In what did I not doubt? With respect to crime and virtue I was in
doubt; I doubted that the one was blameable and the other praiseworthy.
Are not all things subjected to the law of necessity? Assuredly; time
and chance govern all things: yet how can this be? alas!

Then there was myself; for what was I born? Are not all things born to
be forgotten? That's incomprehensible: yet is it not so? Those
butterflies fall and are forgotten. In what is man better than a
butterfly? All then is born to be forgotten. Ah! that was a pang
indeed; 'tis at such a moment that a man wishes to die. The wise king of
Jerusalem, who sat in his shady arbours beside his sunny fishpools,
saying so many fine things, wished to die, when he saw that not only all
was vanity, but that he himself was vanity. Will a time come when all
will be forgotten that now is beneath the sun? If so, of what profit is
life?

In truth, it was a sore vexation of spirit to me when I saw, as the wise
man saw of old, that whatever I could hope to perform must necessarily be
of very temporary duration; and if so, why do it? I said to myself,
whatever name I can acquire, will it endure for eternity? scarcely so. A
thousand years? Let me see! What have I done already? I have learnt
Welsh, and have translated the songs of Ab Gwilym, some ten thousand
lines, into English rhyme; I have also learnt Danish, and have rendered
the old book of ballads cast by the tempest upon the beach into
corresponding English metre. Good! have I done enough already to secure
myself a reputation of a thousand years? No, no! certainly not; I have
not the slightest ground for hoping that my tr