VII.

“Homo animal querulum cupide suis incumbens miseriis.”  I wonder where that comes from.  I found it once in Charron, quoted without reference, and it has often been in my mind—­a dreary truth, well worded.  At least, it was a truth for me during many a long year.  Life, I fancy, would very often be insupportable, but for the luxury of self-compassion; in cases numberless, this it must be that saves from suicide.  For some there is great relief in talking about their miseries, but such gossips lack the profound solace of misery nursed in silent brooding.  Happily, the trick with me has never been retrospective; indeed, it was never, even with regard to instant suffering, a habit so deeply rooted as to become a mastering vice.  I knew my own weakness when I yielded to it; I despised myself when it brought me comfort; I could laugh scornfully, even “cupide meis incumbens miseriis.”  And now, thanks be to the unknown power which rules us, my past has buried its dead.  More than that; I can accept with sober cheerfulness the necessity of all I lived through.  So it was to be; so it was.  For this did Nature shape me; with what purpose, I shall never know; but, in the sequence of things eternal, this was my place.

Could I have achieved so much philosophy if, as I ever feared, the closing years of my life had passed in helpless indigence?  Should I not have sunk into lowest depths of querulous self-pity, grovelling there with eyes obstinately averted from the light above?

VIII.

The early coming of spring in this happy Devon gladdens my heart.  I think with chill discomfort of those parts of England where the primrose shivers beneath a sky of threat rather than of solace.  Honest winter, snow-clad and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; but that long deferment of the calendar’s promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May—­how often has it robbed me of heart and hope.  Here, scarce have I assured myself that the last leaf has fallen, scarce have I watched the glistening of hoar-frost upon the evergreens, when a breath from the west thrills me with anticipation of bud and bloom.  Even under this grey-billowing sky, which tells that February is still in rule:—­

   Mild winds shake the elder brake,
   And the wandering herdsmen know
   That the whitethorn soon will blow.

I have been thinking of those early years of mine in London, when the seasons passed over me unobserved, when I seldom turned a glance towards the heavens, and felt no hardship in the imprisonment of boundless streets.  It is strange now to remember that for some six or seven years I never looked upon a meadow, never travelled even so far as to the tree-bordered suburbs.  I was battling for dear life; on most days I could not feel certain that in a week’s