to speak in Sanchean phrase; and that
beginning must be linked to something that went before. The Hindoos give the
world an elephant to support it, but they make the elephant stand upon a
tortoise. Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating
out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be
afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into
being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of
those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the
story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on
the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas
suggested to it.
    Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to
which I was a devout but nearly silent listener. During one of these, various
philosopical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the
principle of life, and whether there was any probability of its ever being
discovered and communicated. They talked of the experiments of Dr. Darwin, (I
speak not of what the Doctor really did, or said that he did, but, as more to my
purpose, of what was then spoken of as having been done by him,) who preserved a
piece of vermicelli in a glass case, till by some extraordinary means it began
to move with voluntary motion. Not thus, after all, would life be given. Perhaps
a corpse would be re-animated; galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps
the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and
endued with vital warmth.
    Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by, before
we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor
could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me,
gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond
the usual bounds of reverie. I saw - with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, -
I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put
together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the
working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy,
half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the
effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of
the world. His success would