atisfaction of being able to give your whole time to
study.'

'There is precisely the source of dissatisfaction My whole time, and
that wholly insufficient. I have a friend, a man I envy intensely; he
has taken up the subject of Celtic literature; gives himself to it with
single-heartedness, cares for nothing that does not connect itself
therewith; will pursue it throughout his life; will know more of it than
any man living. My despair is the universality of my interests. I can
think of no branch of study to which I could not surrender myself with
enthusiasm; of course I shall never master one. My subject is the
history of humanity; I would know everything that man has done or
thought or felt. I cannot separate lines of study. Philology is a
passion with me, but how shall I part the history of speech from the
history of thought? The etymology of any single word will hold me for
hours; to follow it up I must traverse centuries of human culture. They
tell me I have a faculty for philosophy, in the narrow sense of the
word; alas! that narrow sense implies an exhaustive knowledge of
speculation in the past and of every result of science born in our own
time Think of the sunny spaces in the world's history, in each of which
one could linger for ever I Athens at her fairest, Borne at her
grandest, the glorious savagery of Merovingian courts, the kingdom of
Frederick II., the Moors in Spain, the magic of Renaissance Italy--to
become a citizen of any one age means a lifetime of endeavour. It is
easy to fill one's head with names and years, but that only sharpens my
hunger. Then there is the world of art; I would know every subtlest
melody of verse in every tongue, enjoy with perfectly instructed taste
every form that man has carved or painted. I fear to enter museums and
galleries; I am distracted by the numberless desires that seize upon me,
depressed by the hopelessness of satisfying them. I cannot even enjoy
music from the mere feeling that I do not enjoy it enough, that I have
not had time to study it, that I shall never get at its secret....
And when is one to live? I cannot lose myself in other men's activity
and enjoyments. I must have a life of my own, outside the walls of a
library. It would be easy to give up all ambition of knowledge, to
forget all the joy and sorrow that has been and passed into nothingness;
to know only the eternity of a present hour. Might one not learn more in
one instant of unreflecting happines