Definition of "ungraspable"

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.

1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley

Before, somewhere and time ungraspable, blurred and beset with bewildering details, she had lain alone in bed, listening to gladsome bird voices, mingled with a sense of distressed humanity.

1907, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Human Toll (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 250