The Last Man | Page 3

world, which has
averted its once benignant face from me, to one glowing with imagination and power.
Will my readers ask how I could find solace from the narration of misery and woeful
change? This is one of the mysteries of our nature, which holds full sway over me, and
from whose influence I cannot escape. I confess, that I have not been unmoved by the
development of the tale; and that I have been depressed, nay, agonized, at some parts of
the recital, which I have faithfully transcribed from my materials. Yet such is human
nature, that the excitement of mind was dear to me, and that the imagination, painter of
tempest and earthquake, or, worse, the stormy and ruin-fraught passions of man, softened
my real sorrows and endless regrets, by clothing these fictitious ones in that ideality,
which takes the mortal sting from pain.
I hardly know whether this apology is necessary. For the merits of my adaptation and
translation must decide how far I have well bestowed my time and imperfect powers, in
giving form and substance to the frail and attenuated Leaves of the Sibyl.

CHAPTER I.
I AM the native of a sea-surrounded nook, a cloud-enshadowed land, which, when the
surface of the globe, with its shoreless ocean and trackless continents, presents itself to
my mind, appears only as an inconsiderable speck in the immense whole; and yet, when
balanced in the scale of mental power, far outweighed countries of larger extent and more
numerous population. So true it is, that man's mind alone was the creator of all that was
good or great to man, and that Nature herself was only his first minister. England, seated
far north in the turbid sea, now visits my dreams in the semblance of a vast and
well-manned ship, which mastered the winds and rode proudly over the waves. In my
boyish days she was the universe to me. When I stood on my native hills, and saw plain
and mountain stretch out to the utmost limits of my vision, speckled by the dwellings of

my countrymen, and subdued to fertility by their labours, the earth's very centre was
fixed for me in that spot, and the rest of her orb was as a fable, to have forgotten which
would have cost neither my imagination nor understanding an effort.
My fortunes have been, from the beginning, an exemplification of the power that
mutability may possess over the varied tenor of man's life. With regard to myself, this
came almost by inheritance. My father was one of those men on whom nature had
bestowed to prodigality the envied gifts of wit and imagination, and then left his bark of
life to be impelled by these winds, without adding reason as the rudder, or judgment as
the pilot for the voyage. His extraction was obscure; but circumstances brought him early
into public notice, and his small paternal property was soon dissipated in the splendid
scene of fashion and luxury in which he was an actor. During the short years of
thoughtless youth, he was adored by the high-bred triflers of the day, nor least by the
youthful sovereign, who escaped from the intrigues of party, and the arduous duties of
kingly business, to find never-failing amusement and exhilaration of spirit in his society.
My father's impulses, never under his own controul, perpetually led him into difficulties
from which his ingenuity alone could extricate him; and the accumulating pile of debts of
honour and of trade, which would have bent to earth any other, was supported by him
with a light spirit and tameless hilarity; while his company was so necessary at the tables
and assemblies of the rich, that his derelictions were considered venial, and he himself
received with intoxicating flattery.
This kind of popularity, like every other, is evanescent: and the difficulties of every kind
with which he had to contend, increased in a frightful ratio compared with his small
means of extricating himself. At such times the king, in his enthusiasm for him, would
come to his relief, and then kindly take his friend to task; my father gave the best
promises for amendment, but his social disposition, his craving for the usual diet of
admiration, and more than all, the fiend of gambling, which fully possessed him, made
his good resolutions transient, his promises vain. With the quick sensibility peculiar to his
temperament, he perceived his power in the brilliant circle to be on the wane. The king
married; and the haughty princess of Austria, who became, as queen of England, the head
of fashion, looked with harsh eyes on his defects, and with contempt on the affection her
royal husband entertained for him. My father felt that his fall was near; but so far from
profiting