Falkland, CompleteLytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Falkland, Complete
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
Fiction
Twice in the year, when I went home, it was to that wild and romantic
part of the country where my former childhood had been spent. There,
alone and unchecked, I was thrown utterly upon my own resources. I
wandered by day over the rude scenes which surrounded us; and at evening
I pored, with an unwearied delight, over the ancient legends which
made those scenes sacred to my imagination. I grew by degrees of a more
thoughtful and visionary nature. My temper imbibed the romance of my
studies; and whether, in winter, basking by the large hearth of our old
hall, or stretched, in the indolent voluptuousness of summer, by the
rushing streams which formed the chief characteristic of the country
around us, my hours were equally wasted in those dim and luxurious
dreams, which constituted, perhaps, the essence of that poetry I had
not the genius to embody. It was then, by that alternate restlessness
of action and idleness of reflection, into which my young years were
divided, that the impress of my character was stamped: that fitfulness
of temper, that affection for extremes, has accompanied me through life.
Hence, not only all intermediums of emotion appear to me as tame, but
even the most overwrought excitation can bring neither novelty nor zest.
I have, as it were, feasted upon the passions; I have made that my
daily food, which, in its strength and excess, would have been poison to
others; I have rendered my mind unable to enjoy the ordinary aliments of
nature; and I have wasted, by a premature indulgence, my resources and
my powers, till I have left my heart, without a remedy or a hope, to
whatever disorders its own intemperance has engendered.
FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME.
When I left Dr. -----‘s, I was sent to a private tutor in D-----e. Here
I continued for about two years. It was during that time that--but what
then befell me is for no living ear! The characters of that history are
engraven on my heart in letters of fire; but it is a language that none
but myself have the authority to read. It is enough for the purpose of
my confessions that the events of that period were connected with
the first awakening of the most powerful of human passions, and that,
whatever their commencement, their end was despair! and she--the object
of that love--the only being in the world who ever possessed the secret
and the spell of my nature--her life was the bitterness and the fever of
a troubled heart,--her rest is the grave--
Non la conobbe il mondo mentre l’ebbe
Con ibill’io, ch’a pianger qui rimasi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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