Buck admits to being a bad, bad boy.

**

Conclusion.**

As I committed many of the preceding events to paper, I frequently paused to compare my present mode of thinking with the notions of life and happiness I had formerly entertained; and as I occasionally sighed, I have often doubted whether I really was the principal actor in the scenes I have here related.

When the effervescence of youth and the violence of passion are past, when the imagination has lost its power, and novelty no longer invites, because life has nothing new, the mind viewing things with the clear and unimpassioned eyes of reason, retraces, the follies of our juvenile years with pity and astonishment.

The vanity of human happiness has ever been an inexhaustible theme for the moralist and the philosopher. These by the incontrovertible evidence of experience and the sound arguments of reason, to which they have not infrequently added the lesson of instruction, have endeavoured to prove the fallacy of our fondest pursuits, and laboured to give to youth the judgement and solidity of age. But the inefficiency of their labours teaches us that our knowledge, in order to be productive of the advantages they boast of, must proceed from the same source; and that the precepts of the sage avail but little till they have been enforced by the sanction of experience.

A sigh involuntarily rises, when we reflect that the most enviable period of our existence must be thus sacrificed; and we cannot help lamenting that we are ignorant in what true happiness consists whilst we are best fitted for the enjoyment; and are not able to make a true estimate of it till the finest feelings of the heart have been destroyed by disappointment and dissipation.

The attainment of happiness has ever been the principal incentive to the pursuits of man and according to the propensity of his disposition, he has sought it in the daring paths of ambition, in the possession of riches, the voice of fame, or in the more rational enjoyment of intellectual acquisitions.

Ambition, fortune and fame, even where they have bestowed their united favours, have only served to convince him of their inability to content the heart. The attainment of knowledge and the cultivation of literature have, amidst their boasted utility, failed to satisfy the curious and active nature of man. He has found that on conjecture many of his inquiries must rest; and over what he would have wished the light of truth and certainty to shine, the dark and impenetrable veil of ignorance has been drawn. Hence, in what he was unable to investigate, doubts have arisen; [and] here it is that Scepticism has reared her dauntless head, and from this source has drawn her too powerful arguments to silence her believing opponents.

But if man has been disappointed in his promised happiness, it is not because our life has no enjoyment to bestow; but because he expected to derive happiness from a false source; has sought her in paths which she frequented not, and has used to excess those pleasures which induce pain when they exceed the bounds of prudence, moderation and virtue.

Ambition, when directed to proper objects, becomes a virtue, and the voice of praise will be ever grateful to the ear, when it is attended with the consciousness of being merited. It is the application of riches that stamps their value; and if the gifts of fortune add not to our happiness the fault arises from ourselves.

If in the intellectual pursuits we could be content to confine our researches within the limits that are enlightened by the eyes of reason; if we knew how to stop at the point where it has been ordained that our knowledge should terminate; and could persuade ourselves that we knew sufficient for our happiness; we should not be prompted to bewilder ourselves in those paths of doubt which lead to infidelity.

My own example will give the sanction of truth to most of the preceding observations. I was born with strong passions, a lively imagination and a spirit that could brook no restraint. I possessed a restlessness and activity of mind that directed me to the most extravagant pursuits; and the ardour of my disposition never abated till satiety had weakened the power of enjoyment; till my health was impaired and my fortune destroyed. In the warmth of my imagination I formed schemes of the wildest and most eccentric kind; and in the execution of them no danger could intimidate, no difficulty deter me.

The remonstrances of my friends, the tender solicitude and affectionate entreaties of my mother, though I always listened with emotion and gratitude to the voice of love and reason, could not recall me from my eccentricities, nor stop me in the career of folly and dissipation which led me from precipice to precipice into an abyss of misfortunes.

But if to my natural disposition many of my follies are to be attributed, no small share may be laid to a neglected education.

The very causes from which many of my extravagancies sprung, would, if properly directed, have been a spur to actions which might have rendered me of use and an ornament to the age I live in. But either the good-nature or indolence of my tutor forbore to control the impetuosity of my disposition, till he found himself unequal to the task, and neglected to enforce the utility of instruction till my mind had contracted a habit of indolence that rendered the idea of study and application painful and disgusting.

If the ardour and activity of my mind had been directed to intellectual attainments, I should not have experienced the vanity of thought which made me delight in change and any expedient that could beguile the time and retrieve me from the most insupportable of maladies, ennui.

The calm shades of domestic life, the pleasures of social converse and the tranquil enjoyment of friendship, experience has taught me, have the most extensive power of conferring happiness: but, for the enjoyment of these it requires a mind enriched with information and refined by a cultivated taste: it requires that station where poverty excites not discontent, nor riches tempt to improper pursuits, [and] which affords a sufficiency for the necessities and a little for the elegancies of life.

Removed from the noise and bustle of the world, I have lost all relish for the tumultuous pleasures of life; and little remains of all that is past, but the melancholy reflection of having applied to an improper use the gifts with which nature and fortune had richly endowed me.

Blessed with the reciprocal friendship of a tender and beloved companion, and the society of a few rational friends; dividing my time between their company and literary pursuits, my days might now roll on in serenity and repose, if retrospection did not sometimes damp the pleasure of enjoyment. But in proportion as the recollection of the past is painful, the mind directs its views to the future; and I feel no trifling satisfaction from the prospect, that this simple narrative may persuade the young and inexperienced, if the language of truth has the power of persuasion, that a life of dissipation can produce no enjoyment, and that tumultuous pleasures afford no real happiness.

[This really is the most awful self-serving twaddle. The sentiments are singularly not borne out by the Memoirs, in particular, Chapter 1. KF]

To Appendix. Whaley Index