, who had
flattered him with hopes of cure from the dexterity of the French
oculist Thevenot. He tells him how his sight began to fail about ten
years before; how in the morning he felt his eyes shrinking from the
effort to read anything; how the light of a candle appeared like a
spectrum of various colours; how, little by little, darkness crept over
the left eye; and objects beheld by the right seemed to waver to and
fro; how this was accompanied by a kind of dizziness and heaviness which
weighed upon him throughout the afternoon. "Yet the darkness which is
perpetually before me seems always nearer to a whitish than to a
blackish, and such that, when the eye rolls itself, there is admitted,
as through a small chink, a certain little trifle of light." Elsewhere
he says that his eyes are not disfigured:

"Clear
To outward view of blemish or of spot."

These symptoms have been pronounced to resemble those of glaucoma.
Milton himself, in "Paradise Lost," hesitates between amaurosis ("drop
serene") and cataract ("suffusion"). Nothing is said of his having been
recommended to use glasses or other precautionary contrivances.
Cheselden was not yet, and the oculist's art was probably not well
understood. The sufferer himself, while not repining or despairing of
medical assistance, evidently has little hope from it. "Whatever ray of
hope may be for me from your famous physician, all the same, as in a
case quite incurable, I prepare and compose myself accordingly. My
darkness hitherto, by the singular kindness of God, amid rest and
studies, and the voices and greetings of friends, has been much easier
to bear than that deathly one. But if, as is written, 'Man doth not live
by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God,' what should prevent me from resting in the belief that eyesight
lies not in eyes alone, but enough for all purposes in God's leading and
providence? Verily, while only He looks out for me, and provides for me,
as He doth; teaching me and leading me forth with His hand through my
whole life, I shall willingly, since it hath seemed good to Him, have
given my eyes their long holiday. And to you I now bid farewell, with a
mind not less brave and steadfast than if I were Lynceus himself for
keenness of sight." Religion and philosophy, of which no brighter
example was ever given, did not, in this sore trial, disdain the support
of a manly pride:--