consequences, bequeathed the vexed question to an “Odd Volume” to unravel. That a weighty task was before me you will all admit.
I found myself launched as it were on an unknown sea, and I appeal to you all not to crush me by your criticism on these few remarks I am about to make, but rather to deal charitably with me; for, after all my labours, the surprise to myself is, that
“Yet I live and bear
The aspect and the form of breathing man.”
Often as I have sat in my sanctum, crucible before me, boiling and coagulating, watching and waiting, hoping against hope, till my very senses seemed to depart from me, have I exclaimed with Manfred,—
“The lamp must be replenished, but even then
It will not last so long as I must watch!—
My slumbers, if I slumber, are not sleep,
But a continuance of enduring thought
Which then I can resist not.”
