THE MORAL climax to Rasselas (1759) is the chapters (40–4 and 46) describing the astronomer. The young prince, who has been searching for the ideally happy way of life, one day declares that he intends ‘to devote himself to science, and pass the rest of his days in literary solitude’. ‘Before you make your final choice’, replies Imlac, the poet, philosopher and man of the world who is his mentor, ‘you ought to examine its hazards, and converse with some of those who are grown old in the company of themselves. I have just left the observatory of one of the most learned astronomers in the world, who has spent forty years in unwearied attention to the motions and appearances of the celestial bodies, and has drawn out his soul in endless calculations.’ Imlac then tells the history of his acquaintance with this astronomer of Cairo: how he first visited him, how they gradually became more intimate, how Imlac's admiration grew until he ‘thought him the happiest of mankind, and often congratulated him on the blessing that he enjoyed’. But the astronomer has evidently some secret anxiety, and one night when they are sitting together ‘in the turret of his house’, in the darkness, he declares: ‘Hear, Imlac, what thou wilt not without difficulty credit.