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--Spinoza's doctrine! Dear reader, I had at that time never read
either Berkeley or Spinoza. 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, casting aside
that choicest shield against madness, simplicity, would fain be wise as
God, and can only know that they are naked. This doubting in the
'universal all' is almost coeval with the human race: wisdom, so called,
was early sought after. All is a lie--a deceitful phantom--was said when
the world was yet young; its surface, save a scanty portion, yet
untrodden by human foot, and when the great tortoise yet crawled about.
All is a lie, was the doctrine of Buddh; and Buddh lived thirty centuries
before the wise king of Jerusalem, who sat in his arbours, beside his
sunny fish-pools, saying many fine things, and, amongst others, 'There is
nothing new under the sun!'

* * * * *

One day, whilst I bent my w