“Dear Wynn,

I have been grievously shocked this evening by the loss of the ‘Abergavenny’, of which Wordsworth’s brother was captain.  Of course the news came flying up to us from all quarters, and it has disordered me from head to foot.  At such circumstances I believe we feel as much for others as for ourselves; just as a violent blow occasions the same pain as a wound, and he who breaks his shin feels as acutely at the moment as the man whose leg is shot off.  In fact, I am writing to you merely because this dreadful shipwreck has left me utterly unable to do anything else.  It is the heaviest calamity Wordsworth has ever experienced, and in all probability I shall have to communicate it to him, as he will very likely be here before the tidings can reach him.  What renders any near loss of this kind so peculiarly distressing is, that the recollection is perpetually freshened when any like event occurs, by the mere mention of shipwreck, or the sound of the wind.  Of all deaths it is the most dreadful, from the circumstances of terror which accompany it....”

(See ‘The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey’, vol. ii. p. 321.)

The following is part of a letter from Mary Lamb to Dorothy Wordsworth on the same subject.  It is undated: 

  “My dear miss Wordsworth,—­

I wished to tell you that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet memory of the dead, which you so happily describe, as now almost begun; but I felt that it was improper, and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part, not only of their dreams, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness.  That you would see every object with and through your lost brother, and that that would at last become a real and everlasting source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from my own experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began to feel this, I did not dare to tell you so; but I send you some poor lines, which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and before I heard Coleridge was returning home.

...

    “Why is he wandering on the sea?—­
    Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. 
    By slow degrees he’d steal away
    Their woes, and gently bring a ray
    (So happily he’d time relief,)
    Of comfort from their very grief. 
    He’d tell them that their brother dead,
    When years have passed o’er their head,
    Will be remembered with such holy,
    True and tender melancholy,
    That ever this lost brother John
    Will be their heart’s companion. 
    His voice they’ll always hear,
      His face they’ll always see;
    There’s naught in life so sweet
      As such a memory.”

(See ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb’, by Thomas Noon Talfourd, vol. ii. pp. 233, 234.)—­Ed.