spared. Biography or Autobiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly
enough, none to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive
likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of
imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up between them.
Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume can the
contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and portions thereof be
incorporated with our delineation of it.

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green spectacles) deciphering
these unimaginable Documents from their perplexed _cursiv-schrift_;
collating them with the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in
legible print. Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold,
moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with like, which is
Method) to build a firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since
our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from
Hell-gate to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task
as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as we humbly
presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, the materials are to
be fished up from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering air, here
one mass, there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements boil
beneath: nor is there any supernatural force to do it with; but simply the
Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeavoring to
evolve printed Creation out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein,
as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why to the
far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed
up.

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does the Editor,
dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust health declining; some
fraction of his allotted natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but