He never allowed himself to show a tremor, and he won. Poor
Edwards toiled on, in spite of hunger, poverty, and chill despair; he
received one knock-down blow after another with cheery gallantry, and
old age had clutched him before his relief from grinding penury came;
but nothing could daunt him, and he is now secure. Heine lay for seven
years in his "mattress grave;" he was torn from head to foot by the
pangs of neuralgia; one of his eyes was closed, and at times the lid
of the other had to be raised in order that he might see those who
visited him. Let those who have ever felt the aching of a single tooth
imagine what it must have been to suffer the same kind of pain over
the whole body. Surely this poor tortured wretch might have been
pardoned had he esteemed his life a failure! His spirit never flagged,
and he wrote the brightest, lightest mockeries that ever were framed
by the wit of man; his poems will be the delight of Europe for years
to come, and his memory can no more perish than that of Shakspere.
Enough of examples; the main fact is that to men and women who refuse
to accept failure all life is open, and there is something to hope for
even up to the verge of the grave.
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