dered 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? . . .

"'Would I had never been born!' I said to myself; and a thought would
occasionally intrude. But was I ever born? Is not all that I see a
lie--a deceitful phantom? Is there a world, and earth, and sky? . . ."

If he no longer articulated these doubts he was still not as sure of
himself as Ford imagined. He was, by the way, seldom sure of his own
age, and Dr. Knapp {31} gives four instances of his underestimating it by
two and even five years. Whatever may be the explanation of this, after
three years' work at "Lavengro" he "will not be hurried for anyone." He
was probably finding that, with no notebooks or letters to help, the work
was very different from the writing of "The Bible in Spain," which was
pieced together out of long letters to the Bible Society, and, moreover,
was written within a few years of the events described. The events of
his childhood and youth had retired into a perspective that was beyond
his control: he would often be tempted to change their perspective, to
bring forward some things, to set back others. In any case these things
were no longer mere solid material facts. They were living a sil