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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
211
XVI.
I
have
been
dull
to-day,
haunted
by
the
thought
of
how
much
there
is
that
I
would
fain
know,
and
how
little
I
can
hope
to
learn.
The
scope
of
knowledge
has
become
so
vast.
I
put
aside
nearly
all
physical
investigation;
to
me
it
is
naught,
or
only,
at
moments,
a
matter
of
idle
curiosity.
This
would
seem
to
be
a
considerable
clearing
of
the
field;
but
it
leaves
what
is
practically
the
infinite.
To
run
over
a
list
of
only
my
favourite
subjects,
those
to
which,
all
my
life
long,
I
have
more
or
less
applied
myself,
studies
which
hold
in
my
mind
the
place
of
hobbies,
is
to
open
vistas
of
intellectual
despair.
In
an
old
note-book
I
jotted
down
such
a
list--"things
I
hope
to
know,
and
to
know
well."
I
was
then
four
and
twenty.
Reading
it
with
the
eyes
of
fifty-four,
I
must
needs
laugh.
There
appear
such
modest
items
as
"The
history
of
the
Christian
Church
up
to
the
Reformation"--"all
Greek
poetry"--"The
field
of
Mediaeval
Romance"--"German
literature
from
Lessing
to
Heine"--"Dante!"
Not
one
of
these
shall
I
ever
"know,
and
know
well";
not
any
one
of
them.
Yet
here
I
am
buying
books
which
lead
me
into
endless
paths
of
new
temptation.
What
have
I
to
do
with
Egypt?
Yet
I
have
been
beguiled
by
Flinders
Petrie
and
by
Maspero.
How
can
I
pretend
to
meddle
with
the
ancient
geography
of
Asia
Minor?
Yet
here
have
I
bought
Prof.
Ramsay's
astonishing
book,
and
have
even
read
with
a
sort
of
troubled
enjoyment
a
good
many
pages
of
it;
troubled,
because
I
have
but
to
reflect
a
moment,
and
I
see
that
all
this
kind
of
thing
is
mere
futile
effort
of
the
intellect
when
the
time
for
serious
intellectual
effort
is
over.
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