IV
The joy of finishing and of finishing well! There is no joy on earth comparable to this. Who is there that has not read a dozen times the immortal postscript that Gibbon added to his Decline and Fall? He describes the tumult of emotion with which, after twenty years of closest application, he wrote the last line of the last chapter of the last volume of his masterpiece. It was a glorious summer's night at Lausanne. 'After laying down my pen,' he says, 'I took several turns in a covered walk of acacias which commands a prospect of the country, the lake and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent.' It was the greatest moment of his life. We recall, too, the similar experience of Sir Archibald Alison. 'As I approached the closing sentence of my History of the Empire,' he says, 'I went up to Mrs. Alison to call her down to witness the conclusion, and she saw the last words of the work written, and signed her name on the margin. It would be affectation to conceal the deep emotion that I felt at this event.' Or think of the last hours of Venerable Bede. Living away back in the early dawn of our English story--twelve centuries ago--the old man had set himself to translate the Gospel of John into our native speech. Cuthbert, one of his young disciples, has bequeathed to us the touching record. As the work approached completion, he says, death drew on apace. The aged scholar was racked with pain; sleep forsook him; he could scarcely breathe. The young man who wrote at his dictation implored him to desist. But he would not rest. They came at length to the final chapter; could he possibly live till it was done?
'And now, dear master,' exclaimed the young scribe tremblingly, 'only one sentence remains!' He read the words and the sinking man feebly recited the English equivalents.
'It is finished, dear master!' cried the youth excitedly.
'Ay, it is finished!' echoed the dying saint; 'lift me up, place me at that window of my cell at which I have so often prayed to God. Now glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost!' And, with these triumphant words, the beautiful spirit passed to its rest and its reward.