Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

WOTTON REINL'KED 3because hope has hid herself you think she is utterlyfled. Tush, I tell you, all this is nonsense, and youwill see it yet though you think my words but wind.You were twenty-two last Christmas, and the life ofman is three score years and ten. You have much todo, and much to learn m this world ; only naturemust have her course, nay, she isteaching you evennow, teaching you with hard but useful stripes, andyou will act your part the better and more wiselyfor it.'* It is acted already,' said the other bitterly, ' andthe curtain is dropped, and I have nothing more to dobut undress, but shuffle off this mortal coil.''Dropped ? Ay, but not the green one ; it is thepainted curtain that has dropped, and the first acttruly is done, and we have other four to come to.Pitythat our interlude of music were not gayer, but we musteven put up with it, sighs and groans though it be.Wotton Eeinfred, thou art beside thyself; muchlearning doth make thee mad.I swear it is even so,'continued he, rising into his usual lively tone.*Therehast thou sat poring over thy Geometries andStereometries, thy Fluxions direct and inverse, by theNewtonian and the Leibnitzian method, thy UniversalHistory, thyScotch Philosophy and French Poetics,till thy eyes are dazed with so many lamps, and forvery light thou canst not see a glimpse, and so in thyhead the world is whirling like a sick man's dream,and forlihee it has neither top nor bottom, beginning,