He had grasped at one elusive vision of life, after another.

His mind had become a medley of tags of the comedy and tragedy of human things.

The more confused, the more universal became the poor limited vision.

The whole of illimitable life, he had told me in his flogged, crazed exaltation, was to be captured in this wondrous book.

The pity of it! How he had retained his sanity I cannot to this day understand--that is to say, if he had retained it.