ent life
of spirits within his brain. He took to calling the book his "life" or
"autobiography," not "Life: a Drama." It was advertised as such; but he
would not have it. At the last moment he refused to label it an
autobiography, because he knew that it was inadequate, and that in any
case other men would not understand or would misunderstand it. He must
have felt certain that the fair figure of "Don Jorge," created in "The
Bible of Spain," had been poisoned for most readers by many a passage in
"Lavengro," like that where he doubted the existence of self and sky and
stars, or where he told of the breakdown in his health when he was
sixteen and of the gloom that followed:

"But how much more quickly does strength desert the human frame than
return to it! I had become convalescent, it is true, but my state of
feebleness was truly pitiable. I believe it is in that state that the
most remarkable feature of human physiology frequently exhibits itself.
Oh, how dare I mention the dark feeling of mysterious dread which comes
over the mind, and which the lamp of reason, though burning bright the
while, is unable to dispel! Art thou, as leeches say, the concomitant of
disease--the result of shattered nerves? Nay, rather the principle of
woe itself, the fountain head of all sorrow co-existent with man, whose
influence he feels when yet unborn, and whose workings he testifies with
his earliest cries, when, 'drowned in tears,' he first beholds the light;
for, as the sparks fly upward, so is man born to trouble, and woe doth he
bring with him into the world, even thyself, dark one, terrible one,
causeless, unbegotten, without a father. Oh, how frequently dost thou
break down the barriers which divide thee from the poor soul of man, and
overcast its sunshine with thy gloomy shadow. In the brightest days of
prosperity--in the midst of health and wealth--how sentient is the poor
human creature of thy neighbourhood! how instinctively aware that the
floodgates of horror may be cast open, and the dark stream engulf him for
ever and ever! Then is it not lawful for man to exclaim, 'Better that I
had never been born!' 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 the great