prefer," said the sage, "I am not able to instruct you. I can only
tell, that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study, without
experience; in the attainment of sciences, which can, for the most part,
be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the
expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing
elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestick
tenderness. If I have obtained any prerogatives above other students,
they have been accompanied with fear, disquiet, and scrupulosity; but,
even of these prerogatives, whatever they were, I have, since my
thoughts have been diversified by more intercourse with the world, begun
to question the reality. When I have been, for a few days, lost in
pleasing dissipation, I am always tempted to think that my inquiries
have ended in errour, and that I have suffered much, and suffered it in
vain."

Imlac was delighted to find that the sage's understanding was breaking
through its mists, and resolved to detain him from the planets, till he
should forget his task of ruling them, and reason should recover its
original influence.

From this time the astronomer was received into familiar friendship, and
partook of all their projects and pleasures: his respect kept him
attentive, and the activity of Rasselas did not leave much time
unengaged. Something was always to be done; the day was spent in making
observations which furnished talk for the evening, and the evening was
closed with a scheme for the morrow.

The sage confessed to Imlac, that since he had mingled in the gay
tumults of life, and divided his hours by a succession of amusements, he
found the conviction of his authority over the skies fade gradually from
his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion which he never could
prove to others, and which he now found subject to variation, from
causes in which reason had no part. "If I am accidentally left alone for
a few hours," said he, "my inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul,
and my thoughts are chained down by some irresistible violence; but they
are soon disentangled by the prince's conversation, and instantaneously
released at the entrance of Pekuah. I am like a man habitually afraid of
spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at the dread which
harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be extinguished, feels again
the terrours which he knows, that when it is light he shall feel no
more. Bu