I cannot remember the hour when I did not love Bertha we had been neighbours and playmates from infancy-her parents, like mine, were of humble life, yet respectable-our attachment had been a source of pleasure to them. My failing steps were directed whither for two years they had every evening been attracted,-a gently bubbling spring of pure living waters, beside which lingered a dark-haired girl, whose beaming eyes were fixed on the path I was accustomed each night to tread. My teeth chattered-my hair stood on end:-I ran off as fast as my trembling knees would permit.
I trembled as I listened to the dire tale they told I required no second warning and when Cornelius came and offered me a purse of gold if I would remain under his roof, I felt as if Satan himself tempted me. On my return, my friends implored me not to return to the alchymist's abode. I had been for about a year the pupil of Cornelius, though I was absent when this accident took place. I was then very young-very poor-and very much. Experiment after experiment failed, because one pair of hands was insufficient to complete them: the dark spirits laughed at him for not being able to retain a single mortal in his service. He had no one near him to put coals on his ever-burning fires while he slept, or to attend to the changeful colours of his medicines while he studied. All his scholars at once deserted him-his servants disappeared. The report, true or false, of this accident, was attended with many inconveniences to the renowned philosopher. All the world has also heard of his scholar, who, unawares, raised the foul fiend during his master's absence, and was destroyed by him. His memory is as immortal as his arts have made me. For ever! Can it be? to live for ever! I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers-thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! the weight of never-ending time-the tedious passage of the still-succeeding hours! How happy was the fabled Nourjahad!-But to my task.Īll the world has heard of Cornelius Agrippa. I will tell my story, and so contrive to pass some few hours of a long eternity, become so wearisome to me. I will tell my story, and my reader shall judge for me. Yet it may have remained concealed there for three hundred years-for some persons have become entirely white headed before twenty years of age. I detected a gray hair amidst my brown locks this very day- that surely signifies decay. In comparison with him, I am a very young Immortal.Īm I, then, immortal? This is a question which I have asked myself, by day and night, for now three hundred and three years, and yet cannot answer it.
More than eighteen centuries have passed over his head. This is a memorable anniversary for me on it I complete my three hundred and twenty-third year!
On The Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.A Letter to the Women of England, on the Injustice of Mental Subordination.L.E.L's Verses and The Keepsake for 1829.Presumption: or, the Fate of Frankenstein.Sporting Sketches During a Short Stay in Hindustane.British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism 1793-1815.New Letters from Charles Brown to Joseph Severn.The Letters of Robert Bloomfield and His Circle.Norse Romanticism: Themes in British Literature, 1760-1830.The Collected Letters of Robert Southey.Fables Ancient and Modern by Edward Baldwin, Esq.An Uninteresting Detail of a Journey to Rome.A Description of the Valley of Chamouni, in Savoy.The Collected Writings of Robert Bloomfield.Anna Letitia Barbauld Letters to Lydia Rickards, 1798–1815.Robinson's "Note to 'The Mortal Immortal'" Extract from Richard Garnett's "Introduction" to _Tales and Stories_.Biographical Notice preceding "The Mortal Immortal" in _The Casquet of Literature_._The Fudges in England_ by Thomas Moore, Letter III.
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