CHAPTER XXV. P. I.
Hiatus valde lacrymabilis.
| Time flies away fast, The while we never remember How soon our life here Grows old with the year That dies with the next December! HERRICK. |
I must pass over fourteen years, for were I to pursue the history of our young Daniel's boyhood and adolescence into all the ramifications which a faithful biography requires, fourteen volumes would not contain it. They would be worth reading, for that costs little; they would be worth writing, though that costs much. They would deserve the best embellishments that the pencil and the graver could produce. The most poetical of artists would be worthily employed in designing the sentimental and melancholy scenes; Cruikshank for the grotesque; Wilkie and Richter for the comic and serio-comic; Turner for the actual scenery; Bewick for the head and tail pieces. They ought to be written; they ought to be read. They should be written—and then they would be read. But time is wanting:
| Eheu! fugaces Posthume, Posthume, Labuntur anni! |
and time is a commodity of which the value rises as long as we live. We must be contented with doing not what we wish, but what we can,—our possible as the French call it.
One of our Poets—(which is it?)—speaks of an everlasting now. If such a condition of existence were offered to us in this world, and it were put to the vote whether we should accept the offer and fix all things immutably as they are, who are they whose voices would be given in the affirmative?