myself and the blessed light of human enjoyment. A
torpor crept upon me; an indolent, heavy, clinging languor gathered over
my whole frame, the physical and the mental: I sat for hours without
book, paper, object, thought, gazing on vacancy, stirring not, feeling
not,--yes, feeling, but feeling only one sensation, a sick, sad,
drooping despondency, a sinking in of the heart, a sort of gnawing
within as if something living were twisted round my vitals, and, finding
no other food, preyed, though with a sickly and dull maw, upon _them_.
This disease came upon me slowly: it was not till the beginning of the
second year, from its obvious and palpable commencement, that it grew to
the height that I have described. It began with a distaste to all that
I had been accustomed to enjoy or to pursue. Music, which I had always
passionately loved, though from some defect in the organs of hearing, I
was incapable of attaining the smallest knowledge of the science,
music lost all its diviner spells, all its properties of creating a new
existence, a life of dreaming and vain luxuries, within the mind: it
became only a monotonous sound, less grateful to the languor of my
faculties than an utter and dead stillness. I had never been what is
generally termed a boon companion; but I had had the social vanities,
if not the social tastes; I had insensibly loved the board which echoed
with applause at my sallies, and the comrades who, while they deprecated
my satire, had been complaisant enough to hail it as wit. One of my
weaknesses is a love of show, and I had gratified a feeling not the
less cherished because it arose from a petty source, in obtaining for my
equipages, my mansion, my banquets, the celebrity which is given no less
to magnificence than to fame: now I grew indifferent alike to the signs
of pomp, and to the baubles of taste; praise fell upon a listless ear,
and (rare pitch of satiety!) the pleasures that are the offspring of
our foibles delighted me no more. I had early learned from Bolingbroke
a love for the converse of men, eminent, whether for wisdom or for wit:
the graceful _badinage,_ or the keen critique; the sparkling flight of
the winged words which circled and rebounded from lip to lip, or the
deep speculation upon the mysterious and unravelled wonders of man, of
Nature, and the world; the light maxim upon manners, or the sage inquiry
into the mines of learning, all and each had possessed a link to bind my
temper and my t