Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Yes! we await it, but it still delays, And then we suffer! and amongst us one, And all his store of sad experience he Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs, This for our wisest! and we others pine, And wish the long unhappy dream would end, But none has hope like thine! Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray, And every doubt long blown by time away. O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife- Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood! From her false friend's approach in Hades turn, Wave us away, and keep thy solitude! Still nursing the unconquerable hope, With a free onward impulse brushing through, Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales, But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly! Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers, Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles! And saw the merry Grecian coaster come, The young light-hearted masters of the waves; To where the Atlantic raves Outside the western straits, and unbent sails There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come; And on the beach undid his corded bales. MATTHEW ARNOLD 528. ΟΝ NOTHING There is nothing falser than that old proverb which (like many other falsehoods) is in every one's mouth: Ex nihilo nihil fit. Thus translated by Shakespeare, in Lear: Nothing can come of nothing. Whereas, in fact, from Nothing proceeds everything. And this is a truth confessed by the philosophers of all sects: the only point in controversy between them being, whether Something made the world out of Nothing, or Nothing out of Something. A matter not much worth debating at present, since either will equally serve our turn. Indeed the wits of all ages seem to have ranged themselves on each side of this question, as their genius tended more or less to the spiritual or material substance. For those of the more spiritual species have inclined to the former, and those whose genius hath partaken more of the chief properties of matter, such as solidity, thickness, &c., have embraced the latter. As it is extremely hard to define Nothing in positive terms, I shall therefore do it in negative. Nothing then is not Something. And here I must object to a third error concerning it, which is, that it is in no place; which is an indirect way of depriving it of its existence; whereas indeed it possesses the greatest and noblest place on this earth, viz, the human brain. But indeed this mistake had been sufficiently refuted by many very wise men; who, having spent their whole lives in contemplation and pursuit of Nothing, have at last gravely concluded that there is Nothing in this world. Farther, as Nothing is not Something, so everything which is not Something is Nothing; and wherever Something is not Nothing is: a very large allowance in its favour, as must appear to persons well skilled in human affairs. For instance, when a bladder is full of wind, it is full of something; but when that is let out, we aptly say, there is nothing in it. The same may be as justly asserted of a man as of a bladder. However well he may be bedaubed with lace, or with title, yet, if he have not something in him, we may predicate the same of him as of an empty bladder. Indeed some have imagined that knowledge, with the adjective human placed before it, is another word for Nothing. And one of the wisest men in the world declared he knew Nothing. But, without carrying it so far, this I believe may be allowed, that it is at least possible for a man to know Nothing. And whoever hath read over many works of our ingenious moderns, with proper attention and emolument, will, I believe, confess that, if he understand them right, he understands Nothing. This is a secret not known to all readers, and want of this knowledge hath occasioned much puzzling; for where a book or chapter or paragraph hath seemed to the reader to contain Nothing, his modesty hath sometimes persuaded him that the true meaning of the author hath escaped him, instead of concluding, as in reality the fact was, that the author in the said book, &c., did truly and bona fide mean Nothing. I remember once, at the table of a person of great eminence, and one no less distinguished by superiority of wit than fortune, when a very dark passage was read out of a poet famous for being so sublime that he is often out of the sight of his reader, some persons present declared they did not understand the meaning. The gentleman himself, casting his eye over the performance, testified a surprise at the dullness of his company, seeing Nothing could, he said, possibly be plainer than the meaning of the passage which they stuck at. This set all of us to puzzling again, but with like success; we frankly owned we could not find it out, and desired he would explain it. 'Explain it!' said the gentleman, 'why, he means Nothing.' 529. RUGBY CHAPEL COLDLY, sadly descends Of wither'd leaves, and the elms, From a few boys late at their The lights come out in the street, In the school-room windows; but cold, Solemn, unlighted, austere, The chapel-walls, in whose bound There thou dost lie, in the gloom That word, gloom, to my mind Days not of gloom at thy side; HENRY FIELDING In the autumn evening, and think Of bygone autumns with thee. Fifteen years have gone round Of death, at a call unforeseen, O strong soul, by what shore Of being, is practised that Yes, in some far-shining sphere, |