Note 123 — Chapter XXXVII
Reading edition
— This emphatic “surely all is lost,” of Christopher Wright, is worthy of notice, as indicating the certitude of his frame of mind. Now, “certitude” is the offspring of knowledge, and therefore of belief, and when it is not the life is the death of Hope, an emotion Wright had then clearly abandoned. Hence we may justly infer a special consciousness on Christopher Wright’s part as to the genesis of the fact that the game was indeed up, thanks to the infatuated behaviour of his brother-in-law, Thomas Percy: “up” to all and singular the plotters’ fatal undoing; yet, after all, traceable back indirectly to Christopher Wright’s own repentant act and deed! Truly the repentant wrong-doer suffers temporal punishment by the everlasting Law of Retribution, which lives for ever!