events of his own life, and introduced them by adverting to this
conversation. It recalled too the deep impression left on my mind by
that narrative--the impression that I had never known any analogous
instance, in which a man so successful had been so little indebted to
fortune, or lucky accidents, or so exclusively both the architect and
builder of his own success. The sum of his history may be comprised
in this one sentence--Haec, sab numine, nobismet fecimas, sapientia
duce, fortune permittente. (i.e. These things under God, we have
done for ourselves, through the guidance of wisdom, and with the
permission of fortune.) Luck gave him nothing: in her most generous
moods, she only worked with him as with a friend, not for him as for
a fondling; but more often she simply stood neuter, and suffered him
to work for himself. Ah! how could I be otherwise than affected by
whatever reminded me of that daily and familiar intercourse with him,
which made the fifteen months from May, 1804, to October, 1805, in
many respects the most memorable and instructive period of my life?
Ah! how could I be otherwise than most deeply affected, when there
was still lying on my table the paper which the day before had
conveyed to me the unexpected and most awful tidings of this man's
death? his death in the fulness of all his powers, in the rich autumn
of ripe yet undecaying manhood! I once knew a lady who, after the
loss of a lovely child, continued for several days in a state of
seeming indifference, the weather at the same time, as if in unison
with her, being calm, though gloomy; till one morning a burst of
sunshine breaking in upon her, and suddenly lighting up the room
where she was sitting, she dissolved at once into tears, and wept
passionately. In no very dissimilar manner did the sudden gleam of
recollection at the sight of this memorandum act on myself. I had
been stunned by the intelligence, as by an outward blow, till this
trifling incident startled and disentranced me; the sudden pang