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235
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
·
George Gissing
212
It
all
means,
of
course,
that,
owing
to
defective
opportunity,
owing,
still
more
perhaps,
to
lack
of
method
and
persistence,
a
possibility
that
was
in
me
has
been
wasted,
lost.
My
life
has
been
merely
tentative,
a
broken
series
of
false
starts
and
hopeless
new
beginnings.
If
I
allowed
myself
to
indulge
that
mood,
I
could
revolt
against
the
ordinance
which
allows
me
no
second
chance.
O
mihi
praeteritos
referat
si
Jupiter
annos!
If
I
could
but
start
again,
with
only
the
experience
there
gained!
I
mean,
make
a
new
beginning
of
my
intellectual
life;
nothing
else,
O
heaven!
nothing
else.
Even
amid
poverty,
I
could
do
so
much
better;
keeping
before
my
eyes
some
definite,
some
not
unattainable,
good;
sternly
dismissing
the
impracticable,
the
wasteful.
And,
in
doing
so,
become
perhaps
an
owl-eyed
pedant,
to
whom
would
be
for
ever
dead
the
possibility
of
such
enjoyment
as
I
know
in
these
final
years.
Who
can
say?
Perhaps
the
sole
condition
of
my
progress
to
this
state
of
mind
and
heart
which
make
my
happiness
was
that
very
stumbling
and
erring
which
I
so
regret.
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