vanishing away for about three years; some months before it had
entirely perished, though I stood motionless, everything which I
looked at seemed in motion to and fro. A stiff cloudy vapour seemed
to have settled on my forehead and temples, which usually occasions a
sort of somnolent pressure upon my eyes, and particularly from dinner
till the evening. So that I often recollect what is said of the poet
Phineas in the _Argonautics_:

A stupor deep his cloudy temples bound,
And when he walked he seemed as whirling round,
Or in a feeble trance he speechless lay.

I ought not to omit that while I had any sight left, as soon as I lay
down on my bed and turned on either side, a flood of light used to
gush from my closed eyelids. Then, as my sight became daily more
impaired, the colours became more faint and were emitted with a
certain inward crackling sound; but at present, every species of
illumination being, as it were, extinguished, there is diffused around
me nothing but darkness, or darkness mingled and streaked with an
ashy brown. Yet the darkness in which I am perpetually immersed seems
always, both by night and day, to approach nearer to white than black;
and when the eye is rolling in its socket, it admits a little particle
of light, as through a chink. And though your physician may kindle
a small ray of hope, yet I make up my mind to the malady as quite
incurable; and I often reflect, that as the wise man admonishes,
days of darkness are destined to each of us, the darkness which I
experience, less oppressive than that of the tomb, is, owing to the
singular goodness of the Deity, passed amid the pursuits of literature
and the cheering salutations of friendship. But if, as is written,
'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth