" He
lay in bed wakeful and restless, and took a book to beguile the
tedious hours. The book he chose was Boetius' Consolations of
Philosophy, a work popular among the writers of that day, and
which had been translated by his great prototype, Chaucer. From
the high eulogium in which he indulges, it is evident this was
one of his favorite volumes while in prison; and indeed it is an
admirable text-book for meditation under adversity. It is the
legacy of a noble and enduring spirit, purified by sorrow and
suffering, bequeathing to its successors in calamity the maxims
of sweet morality, and the trains of eloquent but simple
reasoning, by which it was enabled to bear up against the various
ills of life. It is a talisman, which the unfortunate may
treasure up in his bosom, or, like the good King James, lay upon
his nightly pillow.
After closing the volume he turns its contents over in his mind,
and gradually falls into a fit of musing on the fickleness of
fortune, the vicissitudes of his own life, and the evils that had
overtaken him even in his tender youth. Suddenly he hears the
bell ringing to matins, but its sound, chiming in with his
melancholy fancies, seems to him like a voice exhorting him to
write his story.
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