going again--unless----): and I have been twice and once upon the
deep." The seafaring part of the prophecy remained to be fulfilled
on a far more extended scale in his Pacific voyages of
1888-90.--[SIR SIDNEY COLVIN'S NOTE.]

II

COCKERMOUTH AND KESWICK

(_A Fragment_: 1871)

Very much as a painter half closes his eyes so that some salient unity
may disengage itself from among the crowd of details, and what he sees
may thus form itself into a whole; very much on the same principle, I
may say, I allow a considerable lapse of time to intervene between any
of my little journeyings and the attempt to chronicle them. I cannot
describe a thing that is before me at the moment, or that has been
before me only a very little while before; I must allow my recollections
to get thoroughly strained free from all chaff till nothing be except
the pure gold; allow my memory to choose out what is truly memorable by
a process of natural selection; and I piously believe that in this way
I ensure the Survival of the Fittest. If I make notes for future use, or
if I am obliged to write letters during the course of my little
excursion, I so interfere with the process that I can never again find
out what is worthy of being preserved, or what should be given in full
length, what in torso, or what merely in profile. This process of
incubation may be unreasonably prolonged; and I am somewhat afraid that
I have made this mistake with the present journey. Like a bad
daguerreotype, great part of it has been entirely lost; I can tell you
nothing about the beginning and nothing about the end; but the doings of
some fifty or sixty hours about the middle remain quite distinct and
definite, like a little patch of sunshine on a long, shadowy plain, or
the one spot on an old picture that has been restored by the dexterous
hand of the cleaner. I remember a tale of an old Scots minister, called
upon suddenly to preach, who had hastily snatched an old sermon out of
his study and found himself in the pulpit before he noticed that the
rats had been making free with his manuscript and eaten the first two or
three pages away; he gravely explained to the congregation how he found
himself situated; "And now," said he, "let us just begin where the rats
have left off." I must follow the divine's example, and take up the
thread of my discourse where it first distinctly issues from the limbo
of forgetfulness.

COCKERMOUTH

I was lightin