The Austral Edition of the Selected Works of Marcus Clarke

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Excerpt from The Austral Edition of the Selected Works of Marcus Clarke: Together With a Biography and Monograph of the Deceased AuthorMy first intimation into the business of living took place under these aus ices. The only son of a rich widower, who lived, under sorrow, but for the ratification of a iterary and political ambition, I was thrown when still a boy into the society 0 men twice my age, and was tolerated as a clever impertinent in all those witty and wicked circles in which virtuous women are conspicuous by their absence. I was suffered at sixteen to ape the vices of sixty. You can guess the result of such a training. The admirer of men whose successes in love and play were the theme of common talk for six months the worshipper of artists, whose genius was to revolutionise Europe, only they died of late hours and tobacco, the pet of women whose daring beauty made their names famous for three years. I discovered at twenty years of age that the pleasurable path I had trodden so gaily led to a hospital or a debtors' prison, that love meant money, friendship an endorsement on a bill, and that the rigid exercise of a profound and calculating selfishness alone rendered tolerable a life at once deceitful and barren. In this view of the world I was supported by those middle-aged Mephistopheles (survivors of the storms which had wrecked so many Argosres). Those cynical, well-bred worshippers of self, who realise in the nineteenth centu that notion of the Devi which was invented by early Christians. With these good gentlemen lived, emulating their cynicism, rivalling their sarcasm, and neutralising the superiority which their existence gave them by the exercise of that potentiality for present enjoyment, which is the privilege of youth.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.