Page:Vivian Grey, Volume 2.djvu/71

 rial of my beloved friend, when my very heart-strings seemed bursting, my sorrow has been mocked by the involuntary remembrance of ludicrous adventures, and grotesque tales; when they can tell me why, in a dark mountain pass, I have thought of an absent woman's eyes; or why, when in the very act of squeezing the third lime into a beaker of Burgundy cup, my memory hath been of lean apothecaries, and their vile drugs;—why then, I say again, glory to the metaphysician's all perfect theory! and fare you well, sweet world, and you my merry masters, whom, perhaps, I have studied somewhat too cunningly: nosce teipsum shall be my motto. I'll doff my travelling cap, and on with the monk's cowl.

There are mysterious moments in some men's lives, when the faces of human beings are very agony to them, and when the sound of the human voice is jarring as discordant music. These fits are not the consequence of violent or contend-