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 translations from the Welsh
and Danish will be read at the end of a thousand years. Well, but I am
only eighteen, and I have not stated all that I have done; I have learnt
many other tongues, and have acquired some knowledge even of Hebrew and
Arabic. Should I go on in this way till I am forty, I must then be very
learned; and perhaps, among other things, may have translated the Talmud,
and some of the great works of the Arabians. Pooh! all this is mere
learning and translation, and such will never secure immortality.
Translation is at best an echo, and it must be a wonderful echo to be
heard after the lapse of a thousand years. No! all I have already done,
and all I may yet do in the same way, I may reckon as nothing--mere
pastime; something else must be done. I must either write some grand
original work, or conquer an empire; the one just as easy as the other.
But am I competent to do either? Yes, I think I am, under favourable
circumstances. Yes, I think I may promise myself a reputation of a
thousand years, if I do but give myself the necessary trouble. Well! but
what's a thousand years after all, or twice a thousand years? Woe is me!
I may just as well sit still.

"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?
Berkeley's doctrine--Spinosa's doctrine! Dear reader, I had at that time
never read either Berkeley or Spinosa. {233} I have still never read
them; who are they, men of yesterday? "All is a lie--all a deceitful
phantom," are old cries; they come naturally from the mouths of those
who, ca